The South Dakota Highway Patrol has announced that sobriety checkpoints will be conducted in 14 counties throughout the month of August. These checkpoints are designed to deter impaired driving and promote public safety.
The counties included in the checkpoints are Beadle, Brown, Codington, Fall River, Jones, Kingsbury, Lake, Lyman, Minnehaha, Moody, Pennington, Roberts, Sanborn, and Yankton.
Continue reading “South Dakota Highway Patrol Announces Sobriety Checkpoints”
The Sturgis Police Department has a 21-member staff. During the rally, it becomes the third-largest police force in the state. Sioux Falls has 318 full-time employees, and Rapid City has 176.
The Sturgis rally officers, recruited from all over the country for ten days, are easily identified by their gray shirts.
Continue reading “Sturgis Police Department prepares for hundreds of thousands of bikers”
South Dakota State University (SDSU) has once again been recognized as the safest college campus in South Dakota, according to a recent report by SafeHome.org. This prestigious recognition is based on the university’s low violent crime rate, which is an impressive 0.24 incidents per 1,000 students. SDSU also holds the title of the safest campus in the region, which includes Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.
University Police Department Chief Tim Heaton emphasized the institution’s commitment to safety, stating, “We are fully committed to providing the highest level of professional police and public safety services to the university community. The protection and well-being of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and visitors has always been our top priority.” Heaton also highlighted the importance of accreditation, training, consultation, teamwork, and open discussion with campus constituencies on law enforcement and related safety matters.
Continue reading “South Dakota State University Named Safest College Campus in South Dakota”
South Dakota now has a single set of laws for how professional and occupational license applications are to be handled.
South Dakota licensing boards previously had broad discretion and could deny applicants for any felony conviction. That’s no longer the case.
Continue reading “Felony convictions no longer mean automatic license denials”
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Director Colette Peters had a new video released in an attempt to clarify the rules under which First Step Act credits are earned and applied toward a term of incarceration. It represents a leap in transparency by explaining both the rewards prisoners can earn to get home sooner and the complexities of the First Step Act, which was signed into law under President Donald Trump in December 2018. A full transcript of the video is available here.
Continue reading “Bureau Of Prisons’ Video On First Step Act Lays Out Program”
The computer screen showed hundreds of dots on a map, each one indicating a sports betting app in use. One cluster of dots caught the investigator’s eye. He zoomed in and saw it was the athletic facilities at the University of Iowa.
The cluster was “one of those where once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” a source with knowledge of the map told ESPN.
Continue reading “Inside the historic Iowa athlete sports betting prosecution”
As of today, several varieties of intoxicating hemp products are illegal to sell or produce in the state of South Dakota.
That doesn’t necessarily put them out of reach for South Dakotans.
It also doesn’t mean death for the market in alternative intoxicants that’s emerged across South Dakota and the nation in part thanks to a loophole in the 2018 federal farm bill, which legalized hemp.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley hopes a new basic law enforcement training course that prioritizes tribal recruits will prove the state could host regional training for Native American officers from the Upper Midwest.
Jackley and U.S. Attorney Alison Ramsdell spoke Monday at the George S. Mickelson Law Enforcement Center in Pierre, in advance of a media tour of the facility and presentations on the ongoing course.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that it is not a federal crime for government officials to accept gratuities of appreciation in the aftermath of an official act.
“The answer is no,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion regarding whether an anti-corruption law, known as Section 666, prohibited gratuities for government officials, such as gift cards, lunches, plaques, books, framed photos “or the like,” following an official act. Rather, according to the ruling, the law in question solely addresses bribes solicited or promised before an official government act has taken place. Bribes, not gratuities, are punishable by up to 10 years in prison, the court found.
Hoping you have a safe and wonderful Independence Day holiday!
“I am an American, free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” – Theodore Roosevelt