I came across an interesting article describing the issues Rochester has been facing with shootings, and increased gang violence. The article advocates prevention as a means of intervention to try and curb these activities.
You can read the article at http://blog.uwolmsted.org/2009/06/the-street/
The Buddhist temple southeast of Rochester, in Marion township, has been the target of vandalism in recent weeks. On May 24th, a cross was painted on their driveway with the phrase, “Jesus Saves”. Then this past weekend property was damaged around the outside of the building.
According to a report by the Post Bulletin; a group of four or five boys, all of them white and likely younger than 18, have shouted obscenities at monks and temple members from the temple entrance at 29th Street Southeast over the last two weeks, said a monk from the temple.
They could be likely suspects in the recent rash of vandalism.
If you have any information about the recent vandalism at the Buddhist Support Society temple in Marion Township, call Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Scott Behrns at 328-6752.
Police Lt. Al Kuehl will be holding a community notification meeting regarding registered sex offender Christopher Michael Loving, 37. This meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. in Room 104 of Rochester City Hall this coming Wednesday, May 20th, 2009.
Loving is currently classified as a “high risk” sex offender, level 3, and has identified himself as currently homeless. This will require him to check in with law enforcement once a week to identify where he will be residing.
In 2003, Loving was convicted in Ramsey County of Criminal Sexual Conduct in the 2nd Degree (against persons between 13-15 years old). He was released at the end of 2008, but then got arrested for purchasing drugs shortly thereafter. Now he is being released again, but currently has no address at which he will be staying. You can find more information by attending this community notification meeting on Wednesday.
A female traveling down 7th street in Byron was stopped by someone impersonating a police officer last Thursday. It was about 1PM on March 26th that a burgundy Crown Victoria with dashboard lights stopped a female who was delivering newspapers. According to the police report, he asked to see her drivers license. He took a brief glance at it, then said something to the effect of, “Watch your speed”. Feeling suspicious, the female called law enforcement after the incident. She then met a Sheriff’s Deputy to report what had happened.
The suspect was described as a male in is 50’s, medium height, and clean shaven. According to the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office, it is unclear whether this is related to a string of previous incidents of a male impersonating an officer in Goodhue County a few months back. The description of the suspect was similar, but the vehicle descriptions do not match.
Remember: if you are ever stopped by an unmarked police car and are approached by a person in plainclothes, ask them for their identification. If you have reason to believe that they are not a law enforcement officer, then call 911.
I received a “scam alert” from Cop Talk Live, indicating that there was a warning out to Olmsted County residents that a frozen meat truck was going door to door selling meat products. According to this alert, the meat may not be refrigerated properly, and according to a Goodhue County Sheriff Deputy looked like storage of the meat may have been in violation of health codes.
I can confirm this report! People in a truck like this came by home in Byron two days ago asking if I was interested in any meat. I declined, thinking it was a bizarre business plan anyway to sell meat door to door unsolicited. If anyone sees this truck, law enforcement would like you to call them right away at 328-6800 so they can follow up and make sure they are not doing anything illegal.
Here is the note from the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office notifying Rochester Police about this incident.
“Tonight I had a call about North Star Meats selling door to door. I found them at Kwik Trip and spoke with them. They are selling door to door as I was told. They started out the relationship by lying to me. About three weeks ago I saw the van SB on 52 and it looked shady, I googled the business, the van is a full size van with an old North Star hockey type logo on it.
The net says they are shady, selling outdated product other underhanded stuff. When we were talking tonight I saw the “freezer” they had in the back of this crusty van. There was meat just laying out in the air in the back, not refrigerated. Also the inside of the freezer was naked house insulation. Has to be several pages of health code violations there.
They are a legit business, they have door hangers and the such. One of the guys had a pocket full of receipts so they appear to be selling things. Gross.
Just wanted to share, I told them that there would be trouble if I had to talk to any of them again.”
Sent to Rochester Police Department by the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office
Can you easily translate the title of this blog post? Then this topic directly relates to you. If you have kids with cell phones, this directly relates to you! “Do You Text and Drive?” is the question, and if you do, you are not only breaking the law, but also putting your life in danger.
Last week, a young female driver in Olmsted County was texting on her cell phone while driving, drifted over the fog line of the road, overcorrected and the car hit a power pole. Several people were taken to the hospital for evaluation. This needs to be a message to all teen drivers, parents of teen drivers, and all drivers in general that cell phones have no place in a car when you’re driving.
Studies show texting while driving is even worse than if you were drunk or high while driving. Reaction time is slowed by 35% when texting. This is a recipe for disaster. There have been cases across the country of fatalities due to cell phone use while driving:
Drivers, please, put down the cell phones when driving. Parents, prohibit your young drivers to use cell phones, especially texting, while driving. As a parent, I’d even go so far as to look at your next monthly cell phone bill statement and see what times text messages are being sent to make sure it doesn’t coincide with times your young drivers are on the road. It may seem extreme, but you’ll wish you had if something tragic were to happen.
Minnesota Statute: https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H3726.0.html&session=ls85
On the average day in Olmsted County, the Rochester Police Department and Olmsted Sheriff’s office see very few burglaries. There may be at most two or three reports on a given day. I noticed, however, that yesterday (February 17th) there was a rash of seven burglaries in the northwest part of Rochester, along with one additional burglary in Chatfield.
These seven burglaries all occurred between the hours of 5:00AM and 10:00AM, and happened in two neighborhoods close together in the northwest part of town (see picture). On the crime map, the black mask icon represents the burglary calls.
The Rochester Police Department Crime Prevention office indicates that one of the incidents was a gas can being stolen out of a garage at a residence, but no details are out yet on the other incidents. We hope to see some additional information later this morning. I will update this blog posting when more details are available, along with adding that information to the icons on the crime map.
Edit: The website is now updated with the incident details from the other burglary incidents, and it seems that many of them involve items being taken from cars within garages. This is a good reminder to keep your doors locked, and your garage door closed to prevent theft.
For all crime incidents, Rochester911.com shows you the date, time, address, case number, and classification of call that happened on the map. Now we have gone one step further and tied together some call summary information from the crime prevention website Cop Talk Live.
Every weekday, around 9AM, the crime prevention team sends out information about a select handful of the previous days calls for service. Thefts, burglaries, and robberies are the main types of incidents that will get some additional summary information to explain what happened. Not all calls for service will have a summary note available.
You can tell which calls will have a note by looking at the sidebar (image to left) and seeing a little note picture next to that call. You can hover your mouse over that note picture to get a quick summary in the mouseover, or you can click that call and see it show up on the map in full detail.
These call summary notes from the crime prevention team provide very useful information to give some context to the incident that occurred on the map. If you have additional questions about crime incidents in Rochester, you can contact Crime Prevention within the Rochester Police Department.
For questions regarding calls within the Olmsted Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction, you can contact the Sheriff’s Office Crime Prevention department.
Scams on the Internet and via U.S. Postal mail are thriving and they’re still finding victims every day, even here in Rochester, MN! I was shocked when I heard that even in our town, people are attempting to deposit cashier’s checks, sending money overseas back to Nigeria and elsewhere, and expecting a big payout of money to their account. I even heard of one person being told by police the check they have is a scam, and yet the next day they tried to cash it again! Personally, I don’t get it! Perhaps desperation for the money drives people to abandon common sense? The rule of thumb is, if it looks too good to be true, it is!
I am going to walk you through the basics of an Internet “advanced-fee scam”, and remember, there are a million variations of this floating out in cyber space. Then I’ll tell you who I really think is at fault (it may surprise you!)
“These won’t apply to me. These don’t happen in my neighborhood!”
Sadly, the four scenarios that will be discussed in this article happen everywhere in Olmsted County. In the rich neighborhoods, downtown, while making that quick run to Target, anywhere. These are common situations taken right from daily experiences from the Rochester Police Department and Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office.
Seems a bit obvious, but this happens … a lot! The common scenario is a thief will just pick a neighborhood, any neighborhood, and walk down the street … looking in car windows and trying door handles. If there is something plainly visible and of value in a car, they will even resort to breaking out windows to steal it.
Make sure you don’t leave valuable items in plain sight, such as:
A law enforcement officer told us,
“… there are probably 30 to 40 cases of theft from vehicles each week on average. They don’t happen in just certain neighborhoods, thieves can and do target anywhere in the city. With some easy preventative measures, people could help avoid this unfortunate situation.”