Has Mayor ‘High Crimes’ been ignoring the Elephant in the room?
l3wis 
Great timing on denying our police force a decent raise. We are simply not going to get a handle on this by not maintaining and retaining a decent crime fighting force. This information should not be surprising. In the last mayoral election, candidate Jamison warned us we needed to get a handle on the matter;
3. Sioux Falls, SD
> 5-yr. violent crime rate change: +69.1%
> 2011 violent crime rate: 215.1 per 100,000
> 2015 violent crime rate: 363.7 per 100,000
> Murders in 2015: 3
Between 2011 and 2015, the violent crime rate in Sioux Falls rose from 215 incidents per 100,000 residents to 364 per 100,000. The number of aggravated assaults in the metro area more than doubled from 288 to 679 incidents. While violent crime levels are often greater in areas with high unemployment and poverty, the typical Sioux Falls household earns roughly $4,000 more than the typical American household, and the metro area’s unemployment rate has fallen over the last five years to 3.3% — far less than the national figure of 4.7%.
According to the Sioux Falls Police Department, the rise in crime is largely due to the city’s growing drug problem. The number of total police calls and drug seizures by Sioux Falls police has increased rapidly in recent years, with the amount of seized meth quadrupling from 9.8 pounds to 38.0 pounds from 2015 to 2016.
