Wyoming Police Officer Rachel Columbus has been selected to receive the 2016 James Trudeau Law Enforcement award. This award is given annually to one law enforcement officer in recognition of outstanding dedication and service to youth. Officer Columbus was nominated by Wyoming Elementary fifth grade teacher, Amanda Vinzant.

“Officer Columbus is a great role model and a positive reflection of the police in the community,” Vinzant said in a press release.

Officer Columbus graduated from Bemidji State University in 2004 and joined the Wyoming Police Department in 2006. The inspiration for this nomination by Ms. Vinzant is Officer Columbus’s development of the Police Educating Area Kids program for local 5th graders in 2013.

“When the DARE program changed its focus, I thought it was the perfect time to come up with a similar program, but one that only focused on drugs and alcohol instead of life skills,” Columbus said in a press release. “I felt that the parents of the children would be much better suited for teaching their kids about being strong and confident, and the school already has an excellent bullying program in place. Through PEAK, the students can get the real life stories of the negative impact of drugs and alcohol that police officers see on a daily basis.”

Officer Columbus’s engagement with the community runs far beyond her job on patrol and her PEAK activities. She is specially trained for interviewing young children and juveniles involved in physical or sexual abuse situations, and she monitors predatory offenders to ensure compliance with city ordinances.

“The Wyoming Police Department loves the community we work for, and I personally find special joy in interacting with the kids in our community, she said in a press release. “Whether it is giving high fives while on patrol or working with our child protection unit, my goal is to protect the children in our area and show them they can turn to us if they ever have a problem.”
James (Jim) Trudeau, the founder of Lakes Center for Youth and Families, had 35 plus years in law enforcement and was a retired Washington County sheriff, past Forest Lake Police chief, and past Sheriff’s Association executive director.

“I am grateful to receive the James Trudeau award and am honored to receive an award that tributes a fellow police officer who did many great things in law enforcement like Jim Trudeau,” Columbus said in a press release.

The awards presentation for Officer Columbus will be held June 20 with a reception at 6:30 p.m. and the presentation before the Wyoming City Council at 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend and show support. The Wyoming municipal building address is 26885 Forest Blvd.

Photos courtesy of Melissa Pelto and Terri Steenblock
A torrential thunderstorm hit the Forest Lake area June 11, downing trees, knocking out windows, taking lift stations temporarily offline and depositing large amounts of hail here and there, including on Enfield Avenue, where local resident Kaidyn Pelto surveys the scene.

Terri Steenblock captured the coming thunderstorm June 11 near 200th Street North. Among the damaged locations in the storm was local berry farm The Berry Patch, which wrote an online message to customers that it closed its berry operation for the 2017 season due to large hailstones destroying the berry crop. The Patch’s statement added that it does have options for continuing its berry operation next year.

The Forest Lake Police Department reported that a number of people have reported seeing bears in city limits lately. Police encouraged residents not to approach or interact with bears and noted that the animals will likely move on from the area soon.

Police also took a report of a theft from a garage in the 19800 block of Forest Road North on June 13, sometime between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. The thief took a blue plastic container containing Harley Davidson parts believed to be worth about $1,000. A Delong heater and a work jacket with the name “Chris” on it were also stolen.

The Forest Lake Police Department teaches local kids about bike safety June 14 during the annual FLPD safety camp, this year held at Maranatha Church.

The Wyoming Police Department reported June 15 that an unknown person appeared to have dumped prescription medication, including dangerous and addictive medications like oxycodone, on an unnamed residential street in the area. The department encouraged residents who don’t know how to dispose of unneeded medication to drop them off with law enforcement. The Police Department is currently in the process of setting up its own prescription drop-off location, and until then, Chicago County residents can drop off medication with the county’s Sheriff’s Office.

Hannah Davis
Contributing Writer

“I actually thought it was the best commercial of the Super Bowl, to be honest,” Wyoming Police Chief Paul Hoppe said, referencing the Wyoming Police Department’s now-famous February tweet threatening to punish drunken drivers by playing the Justin Bieber T-Mobile commercial during their ride to jail. “It reminded me of some of the dance moves I had back in the day.”

“Which were probably awful,” Wyoming Police officer Tony Zerwas retorted.

That sharp wit and banter is what fills the small police station in Wyoming on a daily basis, so it comes as no surprise that the Wyoming Police Department has garnered international attention for its Twitter page, a collaboration of wit and humor that helps drive home important messages.

“I was watching the Super Bowl with a group of folks and everyone was like, ‘That commercial sucked,’” Zerwas said, adding it was then he recognized an opportunity to remind everyone not to drink and drive. “If we would’ve simply said ‘Don’t drink and drive, get a sober ride home,’ they wouldn’t have listened.” It didn’t take long for the tweet to go viral.

“I was getting calls coming in from all across the country and Europe about that post,” said Hoppe, who mentioned that tweet also garnered attention on “Ellen,” “The Today Show,” The Washington Post and even Rolling Stone.

This April, the Police Department was recognized with the Excellence in Innovation award for its outstanding work in use of social media with policing from the Minnesota Police Chiefs Association, an honor that is voted on by police chiefs from across the state.

“When you’re issued an award by your peers, I think that speaks volumes of the impact that you’re having to the industry as whole, the profession as the whole,” Hoppe said.

But the impact of their Twitter page wasn’t something the department just stumbled onto. Just a month after starting with the department two years ago, Zerwas approached Hoppe about the idea of starting a Twitter account and using social media as a tool to help police, something he’d spent much of his time researching during his undergraduate degree in police science and graduate degree in public safety administration at St. Mary’s University – Twin Cities.

“I’ve always had a passion for social media,” Zerwas said. “I think it’s a really fun way to connect with people. People want to connect with people. People don’t want to connect with entities. So they may have a really hard time connecting with (the badge), but what’s behind it, they’re cool, they want to connect with that. So I had that understanding based on my research and then took that to Chief, and we sat down and have been working on it ever since.”

The department had been trying to utilize its Facebook page, but according to Hoppe, it just wasn’t getting the attention he’d been hoping for.

“We were trying to be like every other institution. We were pushing institutional information,” he explained. “Tony actually came to me one day and said that he wanted to do Twitter.”

At the time, Hoppe didn’t really know what Twitter was, though he knew his teenage children used it.

“I just knew there was a little blue bird that flew around,” he said. Even so, Hoppe began working with Zerwas to lay the groundwork for Twitter engagement.

“It originally started between Tony and I having some in-depth conversations of, ‘Do we want to go on this platform, how will it work, what are the guidelines, what are the boundaries to it, and if we are going to do it, we want to be the best at it,’” Hoppe said.

Zerwas and Hoppe said it was a trial and error process in the beginning, but between digging into analytics for the Twitter page and constant conversations about the content, they started to see what worked and then replicated those posts. Almost two years after launching the account, they now boast nearly 17,000 followers – more than twice as many followers as there are people who live in Wyoming – and average 3 to 4 million views per month.

Despite the department’s virtual fame, Zerwas and Hoppe emphasized that it isn’t just about getting noticed; it’s about administering important content that otherwise wouldn’t get heard and building a relationship with the community in a unique way. Their most popular twitter engagement is a virtual ride along, a live hashtag event in which police detail what goes on during their shift.

“Traditionally in the past, we’ve used brochures to pass out information, and our brochures hang in our lobbies until someone picks them up,” Hoppe said. “Social media exists in everybody’s pocket or in their hand all day long, so we’ve just looked for a unique and unusual way to push our traditional public safety messages. We’re doing it in such a witty fashion that sometimes people don’t even realize that we’re giving them the traditional public safety announcements that they traditionally won’t even listen to.”

The department’s focus has always been engaging with their community in Wyoming. Since they started using Twitter, many of Wyoming’s residents have come out in support of their police, approaching many of the officers on duty and thanking them and recognizing the work they have done on Twitter.

“Policing this town in the last year and a half, not one officer hasn’t had multiple people come up to them and say in person, ‘We like what are you doing on Twitter,’” Zerwas said.

Hoppe, who said he has seen a great increase in those positive interactions while out in the public, credits the support to those tweets.

“We are kind of peeling back the outer layer of the onion and showing people what we do every single day,” he said. “I think that’s part of what we’ve been able to do, is just humanize the men and women that wear the uniform and demonstrate that we’re normal, average everyday people with just a unique job, and we’re truly engaged and embedded in our communities as guardians and not warriors.”

That community engagement, both in person and online, has proved effective in other ways, too, like getting leads on current cases.The department has a 70 to 80 percent tip-to-solved-crime rate when it asks for the public’s help in a case over social media, and it attributes that number to the exposure of the Twitter account.

“If we’re not socially engaging with our community and nobody follows us (when) we request that information, we have very few people participating,” Hoppe said. “So part of what we do is market that exposure so that when we have these relay issues, and we have content and problems and crimes that we’re trying to solve, there’s actually somebody watching it, and that’s the connection we’re trying to make.”

The department’s use of Twitter is considered so innovative and groundbreaking that it has received calls from all across the country, as well as within the state, to speak on the use of social media in policing. Zerwas recently traveled to Colorado, where he spoke about social media at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Public Information Officer Conference, and he has been asked to do more seminars in Minnesota and Florida later this year. Hoppe has traveled across the state to talk with other departments about his team’s Twitter page, something he emphasizes is a team effort that requires a high level of trust but is exponentially helpful in officers’ effectiveness in their jobs. Hoppe said he often receives requests for the department’s guidelines, which detail ethical and legal boundaries for the tweets. Their big-picture message of what he and Zerwas try to tell other officers is simply to have fun.

And fun is what they’re having — not just with their community, but with police departments across the state, including a playful rivalry with Chisago City.

“They’re definitely like a sibling,” Hoppe said. “I think that that’s part of what people like to see is that we’re human and we do have rivalries like everybody else.”

“We’re definitely the better sibling,” joked Zerwas.

To Hoppe, using Twitter and being funny may seem like a simply a unique way to get police work done, but he said its integration into the department has made a positive change in the way officers police.

“It has changed tremendously. I think the thing that you see changing most is the connection we have with our community,” Hoppe said. “I think that’s why people resonate with us, because we do kind of remind them of that one family member who’s just a little bit funny and quick-witted.”

The Wyoming Police Department is currently considering the use of other social media platforms, though it isn’t disclosing which ones those might be. You can find them on Facebook (facebook.com/wyomingmnpolice) and Twitter (@wyomingpd).

A Forest Lake man was charged with a variety of crimes after he allegedly sexually assaulted a former neighbor and secretly filmed her in various stages of undress in 2015. The alleged crimes were first discovered this spring.

According to court records, Alan Douglas Running, 69, of Forest Lake, has been charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct, stalking and second-degree burglary. Police first started investigating him in March of this year after an acquaintance of Running’s contacted law enforcement anonymously to report that Running had shown him video and pictures of a woman that Running took without her knowledge.

The woman formerly was a neighbor of Running; The Times has withheld the area of the city in which these incidents occurred to protect the woman’s identity.

The anonymous tipster allegedly told police that Running was very angry at the woman because of previous interactions; he reportedly expressed that he wanted to kill the woman and threatened to kill his acquaintance if he ever reported the video and pictures to anyone.

Upon further investigation, police learned that Running and the woman used to be on friendly terms until the woman began to suspect that Running was stalking her, which led her to file a restraining order against him. At one point, she allegedly caught him trying to break into her home when she wasn’t there, and she believed he had stolen her underwear.

Working with the tipster and using search warrants on Running, police allegedly obtained a variety of documents Running had kept on the woman – including a list of personal and login information and details on her clothing size – as well as several videos taken of the woman in various stages of undress, many taken by a camera Running reportedly placed in the woman’s bathroom. Referencing the videos and a diary Running kept about the woman, police learned that Running began filming the woman while the two were still on friendly terms. In one video, Running allegedly filmed himself committing manual sexual assault on the woman while she was asleep, and the diary references at least one other attempted sexual assault, as well as Running being in the woman’s home while she was not there.

Sexual conduct

Kenneth Conrad Sanz, 54, of Forest Lake, was charged with fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct and misdemeanor domestic assault after allegedly trying to have sex with a female relative earlier this month.

According to court records, the assault occurred at a home in Lake Elmo. The victim told local law enforcement that Sanz came to her apartment and began touching her in private areas, asking her to “get snuggly” as she tried to push him away. He allegedly told her he wanted to have sex with her, and she left her apartment to call for help.

Strange burglary

A Forest Lake man was in for a surprise when he went upstairs from his home’s basement to discover a 19-year-old man passed out on his floor.

The man, Andrew Daniel Wetterling, of no permanent address, has been charged in Washington County Court with third-degree burglary in connection with the case.

The incident occurred in the 10 p.m. hour on June 15. According to court records, a resident at the home went upstairs after hearing a noise and found Wetterling unconscious in his living room. Roused by police, Wetterling allegedly was intoxicated and admitted to not remembering entering the residence. He was also bleeding on one foot, which was missing a shoe and sock.

A thorough examination of the home revealed that Wetterling had entered the home’s garage before coming into the residence itself. Police believed Wetterling had gone through cabinets in the garage; his shoe, sock and blood droplets were also found there.

The Forest Lake City Center was bustling the evening of June 22 as members of the public came out to support their police force at the city’s Police Appreciation Night.

Forest Lake police were involved in an investigation that led to the arrest, charges and sentencing of a St. Paul man for sex trafficking, according to information released by the Washington County Attorney’s Office on July 6.

The investigation, which began in late 2016, led to the recovery of a runaway girl from a relative’s house in Forest Lake, according to court records.

Joshua Carlisle, 25, who was convicted of sex trafficking and promotion of prostitution, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the case.

According to court records, two juvenile teenage sisters were reported missing in Washington County in November (records did not state their hometown). During the investigation into their whereabouts, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Washington County Human Trafficking Unit found a video of one of the girls online. The video appeared to be advertising the girl for prostitution.

A subpoena of the website where the video was posted revealed that the person who posted the video was Carlisle, who previously lived in Georgia before recently moving north. Cooperating with the Minneapolis Police Department, investigators used an emergency locate on Carlisle’s phone and found that it was in Stillwater. Carlisle was arrested and admitted to knowing both teens. While a sheriff’s detective was on scene at Stillwater, one of the teens was recovered, intoxicated and unable to speak coherently, in a park in St. Paul. While at the residence where Carlisle was found, officers also spoke to an adult woman who said that Carlisle had advertised her for prostitution as well and offered to split $500 with her if she had sex with a man he would find online.

The second runaway teen was not found with Carlisle and remained missing for two months, before she was found at a relative’s house in Forest Lake. Between accessing Carlisle’s phone and speaking to the girl, investigators learned that Carlisle had been trying (sometimes successfully) to advertise multiple people for prostitution, including sending pictures of one of the girls to prospective johns.

Forest Lake and the surrounding area was hit the evening of July 11 and the early morning of July 12 with a strong thunderstorm that knocked out power in many areas and downed many trees. The city of Forest Lake announced that its compost site would be open until 9 p.m. July 12 and would be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, with possible additional Friday hours. The Forest Lake Times as well as many readers were out and about on July 12 to photograph some of the damage and fallen trees.

The Forest Lake man who was charged earlier this summer with stalking and a sex crime related to hidden sexual videos he made of a former neighbor has now also been accused of possessing child pornography.

Alan Douglas Running, 69, made his first appearance July 3 for two charges of possessing an illegal pornographic work. According to court records, child pornography was allegedly found on one or more of Running’s electronic devices as police investigated him for the stalking and sex crime charges (read more about those in the June 29 story “Man charged with stalking, sex crime” or online here).

After obtaining a search warrant for Running’s devices in April, investigators allegedly found more than 100,000 “graphic images,” records state, much of it adult pornography (not including the surreptitious videos Running made of his former neighbor). However, they also found two instances of what appeared be girls under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity with an adult man. The images did not originate with Running but were allegedly found on one or more of his devices.

Forest Lake police have dealt with a burglary and a couple of thefts recently.

A burglary occurred around 9 a.m. July 19 at Stone Cellar Wine and Spirits. A swift investigation led to the arrest of a juvenile teenage male the next day. He was charged with third-degree burglary and gross misdemeanor damage to property. Police did not disclose what the teen stole before press time.

On July 21, police were informed that a vehicle had been stolen from Koppy Motors overnight. The vehicle is a silver 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer with the license number 631-PWE.

Also on July 21, the Forest Lake Sprint store reported that eight phones and an iPad, worth a combined $6,670, were stolen from the safe in the back of the store. The case is under investigation, and the police have suspects.

A man whose name has not been released was arrested the morning of Aug. 3 at the Forest Lake YMCA after allegedly threatening some of the members there.

According to police, the man at one point was in possession of a crossbow and was reported as being verbally and physically aggressive. Two adult females at the YMCA received minor injuries during the man’s threatening incident, but neither woman required hospitalization.

Once police arrived, the man was restrained and arrested without injury to him or officers, but he did allegedly threaten to kill one of the officers. The YMCA was placed on lockdown until the incident was resolved. The man was arrested for second-degree assault, disorderly conduct and terroristic threats.

Two women received non-life threatening injuries the morning of Aug. 10 whey were caught in downed power lines following an accident involving a dump truck in Forest Lake.

According to the Forest Lake Fire Department, shortly before 6 a.m., a dump truck was driving in the 500 block of 15th Avenue Southwest (just south of Innovative Health Systems) when the truck’s raised box bed got tangled in a power line (the driver had raised the bed to drain it of water and forgot to put it down). The tangling led to two power poles getting knocked over, and the downed lines fell on two women who were walking in the area, knocking one of them into the street.

Emergency personnel responded to the scene and recovered both women, who were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries. The circumstances leading up to the accident are currently uncertain.

Power in that area of Forest Lake is expected to be out for the remainder of the day, according to the Fire Department.

Forest Lake Police nabbed a pair of vehicle thieves in unrelated cases at the end of July.

The first arrest occurred shortly after midnight on July 29, when an officer observed a northbound motorcycle on Centennial Avenue Southwest near the intersection with Fourth Avenue Southwest. Observing that the vehicle was driving 10 mph over the speed limit and lacked a working brake light, the officer attempted to pull over the motorcycle, at which point the driver allegedly accelerated, quickly reaching 75 mph in a 30 mph zone. The officer gave chase, and the motorcyclist fled west on Second Avenue Southwest and soon turned into a nearby cul-de-sac, allegedly crashing into a chain link fence. The driver, later identified as Ken John Thiel, 43, of Shoreview, allegedly attempted to flee on foot, but he stopped when the officer left his car and ordered Thiel to return.

Thiel reportedly told police that he fled because he didn’t have a motorcycle endorsement, but further investigation revealed that the license plate had been switched on the motorcycle, which was stolen out of Fillmore County about a month prior.

Thiel was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle.

The second arrest took place later that morning, at around 4:45 a.m. An officer saw a Honda Accord leaving the 1208 West Broadway Holiday station and ran its license plates. Learning that the vehicle had allegedly been stolen about a week prior from Hubbard County, the officer pulled over the vehicle near the intersection of Everton Avenue North and Broadway Avenue West. The driver, Kyle Walter Nelson, 32, of Bemidji, was arrested for possessing a stolen vehicle and on multiple warrants. A box in the driver’s seat of the vehicle allegedly contained drug paraphernalia, including methamphetamine residue.

Nelson was charged with theft of a motor vehicle and fifth-degree drug possession.

The following are other recent Washington County court cases related to the Forest Lake area:

• Kay Rachelle Dahlquist, 58, of Cedar, was sentenced May 18 for a fifth-degree drug crime related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Ryan Neal Dorner, 29, of White Bear Lake, was sentenced June 8 for a fifth-degree drug crime related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Brendon Michael Greiner, 27, of Blaine, was sentenced June 15 for aiding and abetting theft related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Orlando Cruz, 35, of Forest Lake, was charged June 23 with fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle.
• Robert Cody Thomas, 27, of Forest Lake, was charged June 28 with a fifth-degree drug crime.
• Ashley Marie Nichols, 24, of Buffalo, was charged June 28 with a fifth-degree drug crime related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Bailey Nicole Hansen, 18, of Forest Lake, was charged June 28 with a fifth-degree drug crime.
• Shawn Riley Latessa, 34, of no permanent address, was charged June 29 with a fifth-degree drug crime related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Randal Lee Rasmussen, 33, of Forest Lake, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years imprisonment June 30 for first-degree burglary.
• Eric Patrick Logan, 36, of White Bear Lake, was charged July 12 with financial transaction card fraud related to an investigation by the Forest Lake Police Department.
• Darrell Kenneth Kobernick, 50, of Stacy, was charged July 14 with a fifth-degree drug crime and fleeing a peace officer by means other than a motor vehicle.
• Amy Elizabeth Sherman, 47, of Forest Lake, was charged July 18 with a fifth-degree drug crime.

Two vehicle collisions occurred at the intersection of North Shore Trail and Scandia Trail in Forest Lake in quick succession around 2:45 p.m. Aug. 22. According to initial reports from law enforcement, the first collision was between a driving school vehicle and a dump truck, resulting in a minor injury to an occupant of the driving school car. The second occurred shortly thereafter, when a westbound SUV rear-ended a school bus carrying Forest Lake Area Schools students. The driver of the SUV, Rena Matilda Shepherd, 71, of Lindstrom, was transported by ambulance with unknown injuries (a second person may have been hurt in the SUV as well, but that is currently unclear. The Times has reached out to the Minnesota State Patrol for clarification). An occupant of the driving school car sustained minor injuries. Two students from the school bus also received minor injuries. At this time, how the crashes occurred and related to each other is not known. The Forest Lake Times will update this story as more information becomes available.

Motorists will encounter a lane closure, traffic shift, and possible flagging at the intersection of Highway 97 and 11th St. in Forest Lake as crews begin a safety improvement project.

The effort began at 7 a.m. Aug. 28, when traffic was reduced to a single lane on Hwy. 97 between Goodview Ave. N. and Harrow Ave. Crews are converting an existing bypass lane into a dedicated left turn lane at the 11th St. intersection. Motorists are encountering flaggers to assist in moving traffic safely through the work zone.

In addition, a seven-day closure is scheduled to begin Sept. 5 at the intersection of 11th St. and Hwy. 97 for culvert installation. Motorists will be directed to follow the posted detours:
Eastbound: 8th St., 15th Ave. to 11th St.

Westbound: Hwy. 97, 8th St., 15th Ave., to 11th St.

The project is expected to be complete by mid-October, weather permitting. The improvements are expected to enhance safety, and provide better access and traffic flow in the corridor.

For more information visit the project’s web site at goo.gl/2eDMiV. For updated road condition information, call 511 or visit www.511mn.org.

“That’s going to be the message, that enough is enough,” Forest Lake Police Captain Greg Weiss said.

During the Forest Lake City Council’s Aug. 28 meeting, the Forest Lake Police Department, supported by the council, announced that it would be stepping up enforcement of distracted driving and speeding laws on State Highway 97 in Forest Lake. Public concern about safety on the highway has grown in recent years following a number of high-profile crashes on the road, the latest of which were two Aug. 22 crashes at the highway’s intersection with North Shore Trail.

With grant funding for enforcement less available currently, Weiss told the council, the department is taking matters into its own hands and is reaching out to the Minnesota State Patrol and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office to form a partnership to increase patrols of and monitoring on the road, including marked and unmarked squad cars. The department also hopes to partner with Forest Lake Area Schools on an educational initiative. There is no timeline on when such increased enforcement will begin, but Weiss told The Times the department plans to begin implementing the program soon.

Though officers will be keeping an eye out for speeders – speeding on the road is a common complaint among Forest Lake residents – Weiss told the council that studies of the road have shown that speed is not the primary problem on the state highway. A larger problem, he said, is drivers who are traveling at or under the speed limit but who are distracted by their phones or other things, which can lead to improper passing and other dangerous activity. Highway 97 east of the high school is a relatively curvy roadway with changes in elevations and several road outlets, and Weiss said there is far too much going on on the road for drivers to be doing anything but paying attention to their surroundings. He noted that violators caught on the roadway shouldn’t be surprised to be ticketed under the new enforcement program.

Councilwoman Mara Bain said that some residents believe the speed limit on the road should be lowered, and Mayor Ben Winnick suggested placing a flashing yellow light at blind intersections like the one at 97 and North Shore. City Engineer Ryan Goodman told the council that residents came out in force to a recent Minnesota Department of Transportation open house about the highway and that the city has recently expressed to MnDOT that it needs solutions right away on the road. MnDOT will soon complete one safety project on the road – the addition of a left turn lane at the intersection of 97 and 11th Street – and Goodman told the council he would brief them at an upcoming meeting about other potential projects.

“There’s a lot of other places in the state that are fighting for the same dollars we are,” Goodman said.

Old compost site

The council appeared split during a discussion at its Aug. 21 work session about whether or not to find an agreement with Washington County that would result in the county taking over Forest Lake’s yard waste collection operation on the grounds of the old city compost site, without the city charging the county rent for operating on city land. After permit violations by the site’s old private operator in 2015, the city began operating the site itself (without on-site composting) following a clean-up of the property. City Administrator Aaron Parrish estimated that the site’s operation costs the city about $30,000 per year, including time spent by public works employees transporting the waste off-site to be composted.

“We’re avoiding $30,000 per year in costs and we’re not going to lease out that property for that amount of money,” Parrish said of the area, which sits behind the old Forestland Nursery site. The county has also expressed interest in housing a household hazardous waste facility at the site, which would allow greater convenience for Forest Lake residents who currently have to trek to Woodbury to dispose of such waste.

Winnick and Councilman Michael Freer were skeptical of allowing the county to operate on the site due to the county’s behavior during the permit operation issues in 2015. They believed the county failed to notify the city when it first learned that the old site operator, Buberl, was out of compliance, and they felt the county was inflexible in working with the city on cleanup solutions, ultimately forcing the city to spend more money on cleanup and to temporarily close the site. The men believed the city operating a site on its own was preferable to working with an agency that they weren’t sure they could count on to be a good-faith partner.

“If you brought me a $30,000 renter for this, I might take it, but it’s Washington County, so I don’t trust it,” Freer said.

“Who are we penalizing? Us or them?” Councilman Sam Husnik asked.

Freer replied that he didn’t believe the city operating the site itself was a penalty, and in fact was a good value. The discussion ended without a clear direction on what the city should do, but Winnick did have a humorous solution for how to save time and costs for carting the waste off-site.

“Can’t our fire chief give us a permit for a bonfire?” Winnick joked, eliciting laughs from the rest of those in attendance.

Alicia Lebens
Stillwater Gazette

Serving the community and being a positive role model for children drew Washington County Sheriff Dan Starry into law enforcement. When former county sheriff Bill Hutton announced his retirement earlier this year, he tapped Starry — his chief deputy — to fill the remainder of Hutton’s term, which runs through 2018.

Starry’s appointment was approved by the county board, and he was sworn in as the 30th Washington County Sheriff May 1. He had a notable arrival in the Forest Lake area, as he entered office during the local controversy over whether or not Forest Lake would contract with the sheriff’s office for law enforcement services or retain its police department. Ultimately, the city kept its current police force after Starry pulled the sheriff’s office’s law enforcement proposal from consideration, allowing the city and its officer unions to reach a deal.

In early August, Starry reached his first 100 days in office. In an interview Aug. 9, Starry reflected on the experience so far.

When did you start with the sheriff’s office?

“I have been with the sheriff’s office since 1993, so this is my 24th year with Washington County. This is my first law enforcement career. Before that, I worked in a glass factory loading glass.”

What are some of the roles you have held in the sheriff’s office?

“I think I have done just about everything. I started out as a patrol deputy in the Mahtomedi contract area. I was a crime prevention officer, a D.A.R.E. officer when I taught over in the Mahtomedi fifth grade and then at the middle school. I was a school resource officer. I was a K-9 officer with companion Smokey — he’s up in that urn over there, he still comes to work with me — but I have done just about everything: sergeant, commander, chief deputy and now sheriff. So I have done a lot.”

What has surprised you about being sheriff?

“As part of the job, I would say it is just humbling. The amount of people that come up to you and tell you how amazing the men and women are in this department. I know that, but as sheriff you really get to hear it, and spreading that back to the men and women in this agency because they truly are dedicated and doing all of the work day in or day out.”

What are some of your goals as sheriff?

“I am on the executive board for the North Central High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program. There are five metro counties and on the [west] side of Wisconsin, and we are working to decrease the flow of drug trafficking organizations into this area. That is one thing that I am passionate about … there has to be another way to decrease the demand and decrease the flow of drugs into this area.

“The opioid epidemic that we hear about is also in Washington County. One of the things we have done is expand our ‘Take it to the Box’ program where we collect unwanted and unused prescription medication. We have had the program, but we just added a fourth box now in Woodbury. Since its inception, we have collected 35,000 pounds of opioid medication so that the temptation of theft or the abuse of those drugs goes away.”

What is something the public may not know about the sheriff’s office?

“I think the public sees our patrol cars out in the community — that’s our most visible face — but the sheriff’s office is constantly out in the community doing things, even here in Stillwater. The sheriff is responsible for the county jail. We have 228 beds, and today we have 202 filled. The average stay is about eight days, and these inmates are coming back into community. They are our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers — they are a part of our community — so when they come out, we want them to be better than when they went in, with programming and partnerships with other county services, and with law enforcement agencies in the county. I think the county as a whole does a good job with partnerships and collaborations.

“Our investigations division is awesome. We have a lot of big, high-profile cases that the county attorney’s office prosecutes and the sheriff’s office investigates that include sex trafficking, drug cases and crimes that are occurring in the community. We started up a community forensics lab because technology within our society is on the increase and it’s those types things that criminals are using. That’s something we want to make sure we are on the forefront of.”

Will you be running for sheriff in the 2018 election?

“I am running in the next election.”

Where do you see the sheriff’s office in five to 10 years?

“We will have a new records management system and a new camera system in the jail, but I think that it is just staying on the forefront of all the things that are going on. Technology plays a big role in human trafficking, and we are working with county attorney’s office to stay ahead of it, but it’s hard because it is every changing.”

How will you use your leadership role to maintain or improve relationships between law enforcement and people of color in the county?

“It certainly starts with community, and something that I have said since I started is that we will be out in our community making those advancements with people of color and with everyone in our community. We have to be representative of our community and we have to make sure that we are there for our citizens as we go. I think we are certainly making strides and we are having meetings with diverse cultures that are within our county, and making ourselves available for those sometimes-hard conversations that need to be had.”

Anything else you would like to add?

“Being a Stillwater resident, it is very humbling to be able to serve here in Stillwater and the entire county.”

The resolution to a four-year-old bank robbery in Forest Lake was reached Aug. 10, when Brianna Nicole Rice, 31, of New Richmond, Wisconsin, was sentenced for second-degree robbery in Washington County Court. Rice had remained unidentified after her robbery of the TCF Bank in Cub Foods for a few years until DNA evidence linked her to the crime.

According to court records, the robbery occurred on Oct. 2, 2013 around 1 p.m., when a then-unidentified woman approached the teller station and gave an employee a note reading, “Give me all the money in your drawer now! No dye packs or touching the silent alarm. No following me. Wait 3 minutes and call the police. I do have a gun, and I will use it on you.” The teller gave the robber $5,322, and the woman left Cub, ran through the parking lot and drove away in a GMC Envoy.

Surveillance video showed that the woman had entered the store the previous day, and at the time, police told the public they believed she’d cased at least two other banks in the area. Surveillance images of the woman were released to the public, but she was not found or identified.

Though they hadn’t found the woman, police had recovered her DNA. The same day as the robbery, a resident on 232nd Street North (north of Cub Foods) told police he had found clothing and what appeared to be a different draft of the robbery note at the bottom of his trash can (the notes were similar in tone, but the note found in the garbage contained slightly different wording and demanded money from “both drawers”). The clothes appeared to be the ones worn by the robber in the surveillance video, and law enforcement collected DNA samples from them.

Two and a half years later, in April 2016, the DNA from the clothing was matched by DNA taken from Rice by the Wisconsin State Crime Lab in Madison (Rice was being investigated for credit card fraud, identity theft, property theft and misappropriation of identifying materials, police reported). Her physical description also matched the robber, and she was ultimately charged with the 2013 crime. She was sentenced to 10 years of probation and must pay a fine and restitution.

Assault

The Forest Lake man who was involved in an assault with a crossbow at the Forest Lake YMCA in early August has been charged in Washington County Court.

Edward Michael Meusburger, 38, was charged with first-degree aggravated robbery and two counts of second-degree assault. He was arrested by Forest Lake police Aug. 3 after an assault call at the YMCA shortly before 11 a.m.

According to court records, around 10:40 a.m., Meusburger entered the Y’s family locker room, assembled the crossbow, and hit an 81-year-old man on the head. Shortly thereafter, he allegedly left the locker room and began pointing the crossbow at people; eventually, he approached a 50-year-old woman and demanded money while training the crossbow on her. He then allegedly hit her in the head repeatedly.

At some point after that, Meusburger’s relative and personal care attendant located him and got him to drop the crossbow, at which point it was recovered and secured by a YMCA staff member. Police were told by the PCA that Meusburger is mentally ill, and Meusburger allegedly threatened to kill an officer. While Meusburger was being transported to a hospital for an emergency medical hold, he was searched, and a note was found that stated that he was going to “kill and rob someone at the YMCA.”