Open Government

Open Government Open Meetings SFPD Sioux Falls

This is why Police Body Cams are Critical

l3wis January 7, 2022 4Comments

I totally agree with Chief Thum, you cannot control humanÂ beings all the time;

Joseph Larson, 32, has been charged in a case stemming from an incident on July 24 when he used improper force while restraining a man who was under arrest, according to court documents. Police body camera and in-car camera footage shows Larson striking the man several times, including multiple times in the groin, while trying to secure a seat belt around him in the back of a patrol car.

This has been my argument for a long time, body cams are there to not only protect the officer but the citizen that is being arrested. Obviously in this case, he used excessive force. I guess my question though is was officer Larson relieved of duty immediately after the footage was sent to DCI or did he remain on the force until the AG decided to press charges? It is kind of unclear when he was booted?

“Upon learning about Officer Larson’s actions, he did not work another shift for the Sioux Falls Police Department and is again no longer a member of our department,” Thum said during police briefing.

This brings me to another long standing issue I have not only with the SFPD but with this administration as a whole. Besides the immense lack of transparency and theÂ deep hatredÂ towards open government, even when they are communicating to the public, they are very vague. When was he terminated? A date would be nice. Notice the incident happened July 24^thÂ and the arrest warrant did not occur until yesterday. What took so long? You also have to take into account that the city has another case pending that the SD Supreme Court threw back at the lower court. As far as we know, the officer(s) involved in that case still work for the city. Or do they? Nobody knows.

While I appreciate the action being taken against this bad apple, it would be nice to have some clarification about when the officer was terminated . . . oh . . . and if you have a suspect in custody yet for the shootout at the late night Taco Shop? Maybe we can ask the Tuthill ghost ðŸ˜Š

Liquor Licenses Media Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls Tom Greco

Is the lazy local Sioux Falls Media blowing off the City’s open meetings violations?

l3wis November 29, 2021 2Comments

Of course they are. They don’t understand it (we will get to that in a moment) and they don’t want to ruffle feathers. It reminds of what Greg Belfrage said this morning on his show, about talking about politics at family events, he says he doesn’t. I believe him, because he doesn’t know a damn thing about politics and he is probably afraid he would embarrass himself, and he couldn’t hide from his liberal uncle by hanging up the phone on him while passing the gravy.

Many in the media have chosen to not talk about the open meetings violation because they have told the complainant that it is ‘too complicated’. A city official said that it is NOT a big deal and just an ‘ordinance violation’.

First it is NOT complicated and secondly, an open meetings violation is a big deal.

The city is required to have public input on items that are pulled from the consent agenda. Now mind you, if it is about spending $33 on a squirrel feeder at a park, probably NOT pressing, but still required, but this was about a liquor license for a bar with several questionable police calls and underage violations (the real story here), and the fact that the complainant had told many city officials she was going to speak about the item when pulled days in advance. I think the Chair of the meeting, Mayor Paul TenHaken did not call public input on purpose, because he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

This is why this is IMPORTANT and should be shared in the media. You may not always agree with freedom of speech, but it is equal for all of us whether you want to talk about a gun stuck up your butt all day, a fertilized egg that has a heartbeat, that AR-15s are standard for EMTs, defunding the police or bars that are allowing teenagers to get pistol whipped when they illegally came into the adult establishment.

The simple, real story here is that the Mayor, Paul ‘Poops’ TenHaken violated the law by not allowing public input and a bar skirted any public rebuke because of a lazy, cowardly city staff and council and an oblivious media that doesn’t want to work to hard, if at all.

Is the infrastructure bill and January 6th investigations complicated? YES. And we have thousands of reports about them we can read every day. Is censoring public input complicated? F’CK NO! And we should have at least 2-3 local media reports about it. But we don’t.

Maybe if the meeting was held in a food truck?

Charter Revision Commission Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls

Charter Revision Commission changes meeting time for NO good reason

l3wis October 6, 2021 3Comments

From today’s meeting, the good news is that they will be discussing my proposals* at November’s meeting. The bad news is that they changed the meeting time from 4 PM to 3:30 PM, I’m guessing due to the whining and crying of the 1st Amendment Hater City Attorney, Stacy Kooistra. This from the minutes of September’s meeting;

City Attorney Kooistra reminded the Commission of the process for Public Input and the need for items to be listed on the Agenda for discussion or voting purposes. He stated there may be a need to reschedule future meetings to earlier in the day to allow for additional time.

No mention of how I cut him off during public input by saying they couldn’t ask me questions.

During open discussion at the end of today’s meeting they discussed the change (I love how they must have dress rehearsal before the meeting to make sure they can slip this stuff in and make it look legit). Commissioner Carl Zylstra mentions he went and tried to find a meeting longer then last month’s meeting of 1 hour 30 minutes and he could only find one longer in July of 2019 which lasted 1 hour 48 minutes. They quickly moved into a discussion about moving the meetings to 3:30 PM so that they could have more time to discuss items before 5 PM which city attorney Kooistra argued was the time staff needed to leave (there is NOTHING in the Charter requiring boards to adhere to staffers work schedules, if I am wrong, please notate in the comments section and I will update).

Only Commissioner Anne Hajek (partially) objected and said that the later time is to better serve the public (attending). But it fell on deaf ears as they all agreed to have November’s meeting at 3:30 PM so staff could leave at 5 PM.

As I have argued these public meetings are for the PUBLIC, NOT the city staff and I was extremely disappointed in the CRC for caving to the whims of the city attorney and his ignorant objections to long meetings.

This is also contributing to the constant destruction of open and transparent government by this administration and his hitmen. Maybe no one participates in city government because the meeting times are inconvenient. Yup. And they continue their madness with this change.

*Commissioner Carl Zylstra suggested my proposal for having city directors have residency within Sioux Falls could be easily inserted into the charter. So I still have hope that at least one of my proposals will make the ballot 🙂

1st Amendment Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: So now the Sioux Falls City Council is just deleting (censoring) the meeting videos?

l3wis June 2, 2021 9Comments

UPDATE: The meeting has been fixed. Last night it was missing about the last 30 minutes.

So I showed up late to the City Council meeting last night and did public input on some items towards the end and mysteriously, that part of the meeting is missing.

I’m going to be nice, or at least ‘TRY’ to be nice 🙂

I could go on rants about open government, the 1st Amendment, the violation of State Law, etc., oh I just did.

But how is that a city with a $700 million dollar yearly budget can’t rebroadcast their public meetings in their entirety?

When I look at the city council in action it reminds me of this image;

BUELLER? BUELLER? BUELLER? HAS ANYONE SEEN BUELLER?

The sad irony is the city could rebroadcast these meetings on YouTube, FOR FREE.

1st Amendment Curt Soehl Medical Mary Jane Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Chair Soehl is quite the Authoritarian

l3wis May 26, 2021 3Comments

The newly elected chair, Curt Soehl, has quite the authoritarian streak. Yesterday while chairing several of the meetings he kept limiting public input to 15 minutes or about 3 people. They should not be scheduling these meetings back to back and should be spreading them out over a couple of days. But this does not give him an excuse to limit public input, it is a blatant violation of the 1^stÂ Amendment in reference to prior restraint.

While I thought maybe this was just a one-time decision someone told me he pulled the same trick today at the 10:30 AM, downtown library Working Session. Hey, I get it, they don’t like open government, that’s why they have meetings in the middle of the morning at the library instead of Carnegie, but now it seems they want to limit it also to the ones that can actually attend. I have never seen so much disdain towards the public’s opinion on matters. Yes, the council hasn’t been very open for a long time, but now there seems to be a lot of openness about NOT being open. They seem to wear it like a badge.

As for the meeting itself, it was a bunch of Covid money handouts to the Parks Department projects including more tennis courts, because you know, it is such a huge sport in Sioux Falls, LOL.Â I am often reminded of this when I drive by the parking lot at the Huether tennis center with 2-3 cars in the lot. Wondering if we will ever get our Half-Million back.

Speaking of open government and transparency, during the working session yesterday, I found it a bit bizarre that the council hasn’t asked the very people who wrote IM26 (Medical Marijuana) to be a part of the discussion. Wouldn’t you want the very people who wrote the successful measure to help advise you on what is in it? Or do we want to just do whatever we want to (basically sitting on our hands) then come up with regulations without their input then let them sue us? Seems counterproductive to me. Not sure the council or county commission has done their research (not likely) but the national movement to decriminalize marijuana has a lot of Benjamins behind it and they take their investments seriously.

This is what you get when you have a local government that works behind closed doors, is not transparent, limits public input and does the bidding of big business instead of the work of the people. All the hub-bub about TIFs, Mary Jane regulations, zoning, etc. doesn’t mean a hill of beans if you don’t operate government in the open. As I said last week, only crooks, scammers and schemers do business behind closed doors. Add authoritarians to that list.

This is why Police Body Cams are Critical

Is the lazy local Sioux Falls Media blowing off the City’s open meetings violations?

Charter Revision Commission changes meeting time for NO good reason

UPDATE: So now the Sioux Falls City Council is just deleting (censoring) the meeting videos?

Sioux Falls City Council Chair Soehl is quite the Authoritarian

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