Mayor Huether; The best way to combat crime in our community is to close your garage door and avoid the crazies.

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In the latest episode of Greg Belfrage’s Mayoral blab fest, once again, Mike is in complete denial of the rising violent crime rate in our city and blows it off as a result of fast growth, meth and alcohol use and mental illness. Huh? We will get to that in a moment.

But before all the talk about locking up your car and crime, the mayor told Smello radio listeners that we have ALWAYS paid for infrastructure upgrades to sewer and water from the enterprise funds.

Now I think he is just lying for the fun of it.

He also thanked councilors Anderson and Karsky for getting the EC built and Snowgates tested, then mumbled something about struggling with Jamison and Staggers.

But back to crime. While it should be NO surprise the chief denier is in denial over our soaring crime rates, his comment about blaming the mentally ill for this rise in crime is neither productive OR truthful.

He gets on the other Smello media source and says;

many Sioux Falls crimes stem from drug and alcohol abuse, as well as mental illness.

The city is going to combat each of these issues? I know it’s illegal to be drunk or high walking down the street, but now it’s going to attract attention from city officials if you have a mental health issue and dare to go out in public?

I guess the county jail had better stock up on cots and plan on at least two people per cell when there’s a concert at the event center, the city is going to start rounding up not only the homeless, but alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with mental health issues too.

So while the state has formed a task force to ensure people with mental illness get better treatment than they do now, and hopefully spend less time in South Dakota’s criminal justice system, once again the Sioux Falls Mayor knows better and instead has preemptively decided that people with mental health issues are criminals and a matter of public concern. Hello ACLU?

No wonder the city can’t keep a human rights coordinator.

 

Still a mystery why former SF Firefighter was hacking emails?

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So was anyone at this sentencing or have access to a transcript?

A former Sioux Falls city fire official won’t serve jail time for unlawfully accessing the fire chief’s email account.

A judge on Monday sentenced Patrick Warren to three years of supervised probation and 100 hours of community service.

He pleaded guilty in December to unlawful use of a computer and in exchange, prosecutors dropped 14 other counts against the former division chief.

Warren looked at Fire Chief Jim Sideras’ email account and saw confidential messages between Sideras and Sioux Falls Police Chief Doug Barthel.

Still curious why he was doing this and if he acted alone. Seems shady.

Sue Nipe appointed to the MCC Criminal Justice Planning Committee

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And she wants feedback from you;

I’ve been appointed to the Minnehaha County Commission’s  Criminal Justice Planning Committee.  We haven’t been notified yet when the  meetings will start.  However, I’d appreciate any advice or suggestions  anyone has regarding how to improve things at the county level.  There was  an article in the 2/10 Argus on page 3A, “County to update juvenile detention  policies, procedures.”  Some federal consultants already did a review of  the system and presented the county with a 64-page report.  The public can  access this report at www.minnehahacounty.org, then click on  Departments, scroll down and click on Sheriff, then, on the left side under  Department Information, click on Jail and Justice System Assessment.  The  entire report isn’t available yet; the sheriff’s office is working on technical  issues as only the first page of the report shows up.
As identified in the Argus article, the committee will  carry out a comprehensive review of Minnehaha County’s corrections facilities  and future needs which is driven by several of Sheriff Mike Milstead’s goals  which include:
-ensuring the county’s regional jail is used to house  only inmates that need to be in secure detention
-replacing a two-decades-old Community Corrections  Center that is on the point of outliving its usefulness
-applying, on a widespread basis, alternatives to  incarceration such as electronic monitoring to free up jail beds for serious  offenders and to keep low-risk inmates in the community where they have a  better chance to become productive citizens.
Any feedback may be sent to me at
Sue Nipe

Sioux Falls ‘seems’ to have a pyromaniac in our midst

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While I don’t usually comment on criminal activity in SF that much on my site, this is beginning to concern me;

Two vehicles and a garage were found on fire early Sunday in an area north of downtown that has been plagued by vehicle and garage fires.

Sioux Falls Fire Rescue responded at 2:30 a.m. to a reported vehicle fire near a building at 1200 N. Dakota Ave. Later, a garage fire was extinguished at 1220 N. Main Ave.

An Oct. 8 article in the Argus Leader noted that firefighters had responded to the same neighborhood southeast of Minnesota Avenue and Russell Street at least seven times in six weeks for car or garage fires.

The scary part about a pyromaniac is that they progress from starting small fires to much bigger fires, sometimes resulting in harm or death. They are also known to be younger;

Individual factors that can lead to pyromania mainly deal with personal issues in someones life. This category includes adolescents who have committed crimes in the past. For example, 19% of adolescents suffering from pyromania have been charged with vandalism and 18% are nonviolent sexual offenders. Other causes may include the seeking of attention from authorities or parents and resolving social issues such as bullying or lack of friends (Frey 2001). Another cause may be that the patient is subconsciously seeking revenge for something that has occurred in the past (Oliver).

Usually I would let the SF Fire Department and SF police department solve this all on their lonesomes, but we should all keep an eye out for this perp, it is only going to get worse until they are caught. I also think the FD and PD need to do a better job of informing the public about what someone like this is capable of AND the warning signs if they think they are living with someone like this.

 

Isn’t Video Lottery GREAT!

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bank_robber

I’ve been saying, once someone gets killed maybe we will all realize that this stupid experiment isn’t worth it;

With surveillance video rolling, a young man in plain clothes robbed a Sioux Falls casino at knife-point Wednesday night, forcing the 60-year-old clerk through the business by her neck.

 

The crime at Paradise Casino was the 21st business robbery of the year in the city, one shy of the total for all of last year. Video lottery casinos have accounted for about half of those.

Almost one a week! WOO-HOO! I have been kind of disappointed though, there hasn’t been one in my neighborhood for awhile. I love it when investigators yell at me and tell me to mind my own business.

Clemens encouraged casino managers to do what Paradise did: Lock the doors at night and leave it up to employees to let customers inside. He said similar strategies saved two casinos from being robbed earlier this year when would-be robbers showed up at locked doors.

Actually the first solution would be to install ATM’s in the casinos that dispense winnings from scanning a ticket so that the cashier doesn’t have access to large amounts of money. But the best solution would be to get rid of this stupid way of funding government, once and for all.