CRIME
WHY IS RAPID CITY RANKED IN THE TOP 50?
AUTHOR: EJ MANN II “
In the late summer of 2019, my family and I left Florida with a packed 26 foot UHaul truck, pulling a 17 ft enclosed trailer, with 2 vehicles driving behind the truck. We were weary of 10 years of heat, humidity and hurricanes, and longed to return to the Black Hills region. My wife was from Deadwood, and I met her when I was a USAF serviceman back in 1990. Besides the weather issues, we were happy to leave an area that had rising crime rates, especially violent crime. We longed to be in a state with 4 seasons, friendly neighbors, and a low crime rate.
Last year, in Rapid City on the evenings of Nov 28-29 2021, there were two homicides in the space of 12 hours. One of them unfortunately involved a juvenile on a street just 60 seconds walking distance from my home. The area where this violent crime occurred is a middle class neighborhood, with manicured lawns, and well kept single family homes. In other words, much like the neighborhood I live in. This crime shook our family to the core. We parent two sons, and we had selected a home in a relatively low crime, which we thought was a “safe” area to raise them and live out our retirement. Instead, we now read on a regular basis in the paper or hear on the news, about the rising crime rate in our city that seems to be careening out of control. To confirm this, I consulted the State of SD Attorney General’s 2020 Crime Report, which lists figures for each police dept in the state.
I was shocked to see that over a 5 yr period from 2016-2020, murders have risen 600% (from 2-13), rapes have risen 25% (103 reported in 2020 with only 1 arrest!), robbery is up 25% (29 arrests out of 104 reports robberies in 2020), aggravated assaults are up 25%, Burglaries/breaking and entering crimes are up 30% (with a 7% arrest rate), and car thefts are up 75% in 2020, with a 4% arrest rate.
As if these figures were not enough to shock the conscience, the online news website 247wallst.com, in 2021 published an article on Nov 6 titled “America’s Top 50 Most Dangerous Metropolitan Areas” looked at crime data increases in metro areas of 100,000 people in the USA. Was there any way Rapid City, home of Mt Rushmore, the mighty B1B, and the beautiful Black Hills, could be in the top 50 USA metro areas in crime?
Unfortunately, Rapid City was listed at #29, out of 384 Metro areas of 100,000, which is about the top 8%, in the entire United States of America….link: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2021/11/06/americas-50-most-dangerous-metropolitan-areas/6/ This report on the 247wallst. website lists areas where crime has increased dramatically.
AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO WONDERS “ WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE”? IS RAPID CITY TURNING INTO MINNEAPOLIS, OR PORTLAND, OR CHICAGO, OR A DOZEN OTHER CRIME RIDDEN CITIES WHERE THE CRIMINIAL ELEMENT HAS GOTTEN THE UPPER HAND? I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT.
The sad fact is that every evening as bedtime approaches and the lights go out in our home, after putting our kids to bed, we must ensure our doors are locked with deadbolts, our outside security lights are on, and my .45 cal self defense handgun is locked and loaded by my bedside. A sad but necessary reality.
