Tag: Fargo (page 1 of 3)

A forgotten veteran

Native man’s twisted trail into a court system that doesn’t seem to care

By C.S. Hagen
MOORHEAD – With fingers twisted by acute arthritis, Kevin “NeSe” Shores pushed the lever to propel his wheelchair into the Clay County Courthouse. His free hand clutched a large white banker box filled with documents. Folded in worn leather rested an iPhone, his digital eyes.

A driver and assistant followed, told him when to steer right, when to stop. At times, he had to push him through a doorway.  

“I’m literally going into court blind,” Shores, an Anishinaabe, enrolled in White Earth Reservation, said. “In the eyes of the court, I’m considered a vulnerable adult, and to cause me any harm is against the law.”

Since the day he received a compulsory cocktail of shots and vaccinations during Navy boot camp, a rheumatoid variant disease he claims is Gulf War illness has broken and bent his body until he can no longer walk and can no longer see. He served aboard the USS Fox, a guided missile cruiser and one of the first ships to arrive during the Gulf War.

Hands gnarled by an acute arthritic condition, an illness Kevin “NeSe” Shores says is Gulf War Syndrome, he relies on Apps and programs to be able to read – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“As a veteran who is in my wheelchair because I swore to uphold the Constitution, it’s sad that this system that I am allegedly dying for, this slow death, is failing me,” Shores said. “We are in a wrong place as a society. It’s disheartening. I know I’m not the only veteran that is going through this ridiculousness.”

He lost his first marriage due to his symptoms, and a second relationship, a binding ceremony with a Native woman, was recently annulled. Now, he’s defending himself in court for the rights to see his children, and for financial reasons. He says that Clay County Court has failed in notifying him properly, and has ignored his rights under the Americans with Disability Act.

“There is a lot of stress on relationships dealing with this condition,” Shores said. “I’m trying to rectify the situation with the sheriff’s department, and in the meantime I missed a preliminary hearing that I wasn’t aware of.”

Dressed in moccasins, a well-worn black cowboy hat, hair long and cleanly braided, Shores told Seventh Judicial District Judge Steven J. Cahill last week that he was not in court out of his own free will, and because of the court officials’ ineptitude, he missed a court date and lost his parental rights because of it. His computer is six years slow, and he was initially denied using the devices he requires to record.

Kevin “NeSe” Shores and his box of paperwork, none of which he can read due to what he says is Gulf War Syndrome – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“My challenge is I can only go by what I hear,” Shores said. “Since I couldn’t have any of my devices, I had to go back and go through the transcripts, which I had to pay for. I don’t know if you know what it’s like for a blind person to try and search the web. For some reason, I kept missing this one little click spot for the ADA request.”  

He can’t afford an attorney, he said, so he prepares everything himself.

“I’m just scrambling just trying to stay afloat.”

During one court visit, he claims a bailiff elbowed him in the face during courtroom drama after he attempted to describe his marriage was a Native binding ceremony, and not a sanctioned marriage.  

“How am I to take notes, how am I to prepare for this?” Shores said. “It’s like a domino effect, you have to absolutely stay on top of all of the stuff. Before, I was paying people out of my own pocket for scanning things, but the court is supposed to provide. I am trying to calculate now how much money I spent going back to the original separation.”

All paperwork takes Shores time to scan and listen to.

“As a blind person you cannot serve a blind person papers,” Shores told Judge Cahill in court. This court has trampled on my ADA rights. You have not given me due process of law. My biggest question is why am I here? Why were my children used as leverage when you suspended my rights?”

“Because you were ignoring us, sir,” Cahill said. Cahill was reprimanded in 2006 by the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards for at least 18 violations of the rules governing the conduct of judges.

“I have not been ignoring you,” Shores said. “I’ve been trying to be compliant.”

After a lengthy tit-for-tat, including Shores asking the judge to recuse himself from the case, Judge Cahill refused the request and ordered the case continued to give Shores more time to prepare. Cahill agreed to order the court to deliver documents to Shores in a manner in which he can scan, but treatments for his illness, and the case, which is against his second “wife,” has left him broke, he said.

“The judge stated that I am more likely going to try to use my disability to get out of court,” Shores said. “And nothing could be further from the truth. The last time I went to court, not only did I get whirly screwed, I had to pay somebody to gather papers, out of my own pocket I had to pay thousands of dollars just to assist me.

“The judge was lying from the get-go that he was well aware of the challenges that I have,” Shores said.

During the years that he did not fall under 100 percent disability, he paid more than $300,000 for care and services, he said. Settlement money for an accident he had in 2000 has been depleted, he said.  

Kevin “NeSe” Shores as he exits Clay County Courthouse, is completely blind due to what he says is Gulf War Syndrome – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Gulf War illness
Before Boot Camp, Shores weighed in more than 200 pounds, stood five-feet-eleven-inches, and was the former captain of a local swimming team. The first signs not all was right came shortly after receiving a cocktail of vaccinations. Days later, he was diagnosed with drop foot, a nerve disorder.

“That’s where, I am absolutely sure, I got it,” Shores said.

The military ran the gamut of excuses, Shores said. One explanation was that Middle Eastern sand was too fine for American lungs. They next rational was to blame conditions on mites, then that Saddam Hussein was using biological and chemical weapons, and finally, that they were given experimental inoculations before the war.

A 2008 study by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses reports that Gulf War illness is a multisystem condition resulting from service during the 1990-1992 Gulf War, and is the most prominent health issues affecting veterans. The illness affects one fourth of 697,000 U.S. veterans who served. Symptoms include persistent memory and concentration problems, chronic headaches, widespread pain, gastrointestinal problems, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and other abnormalities not explained by well-established diagnoses.

Few veterans have recovered, and until now, there are no effective treatments, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, reported. Two possible causes include the use of pills given to help effects of nerve agents, and the widespread use of pesticides during deployment.

In 1996, Shores accepted his first wheelchair.

In 1998, the same year Congress mandated the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses to study and advise the federal government, Shores lost sight in his left eye. At the time he was listed as 20 percent disabled, but received little assistance.

Two years later, while riding along Highway 10 at 3.4 miles per hour in his wheelchair from Moorhead to St. Paul to raise awareness about Gulf War illnesses, he was run over by a garbage truck, breaking his femur and elbow and guaranteeing him a hip replacement.

Kevin Shores posing for a picture while aboard the USS Fox in the late 1980s – provided by Kevin Shores

Not until 2005, however, nearly 15 years after Operation Desert Storm, did the Veterans Administration list Shores as 100 percent disabled. Since then, his symptoms have slowly broken his body down. His medications, including addictive synthetic opioids, serve to maintain, not to heal. His spirit , however, remains strong. He has run for the elected position of mayor three times, and has become known as the “megaphone man,” he said. He also does comedy and runs a conspiracy-based Internet radio news show.

“The ‘megaphone man’ because I voice my opinion for the underdogs,” Shores said.

Much like his Indigenous name, “NeSe,” pronounced nay-say, which means someone who speaks truth to power, or is a “maker of great noise, like the thunder,” Shores has never sat still for long, despite his handicaps. He uses an iPhone app as his mobile eyes, and has special scanning equipment at home to help him read.

“I consider myself a traditionalist as much as modern society will allow me,” Shores said. “Your name is your power, you don’t ever share your entire name, except with your mother or father. You only use a syllable of it.”

Because of the secretive and mysterious nature of the Gulf War illness, Shores’ efforts at raising awareness and at conducting research has led him to be labeled as a conspiracy theorist, he said.

“I never really wanted to be a conspiracy theorist, but because of the Gulf War illness, I was thrown into it.”

His online videos are lumped into Bigfoot, aliens, and secret society categories, he said. “Gulf War illness wasn’t talked about, and if you did you were considered crazy. But it’s basically the Agent Orange of 2000.”  

The shock from returning to America after three years of service, the inability to find meaningful work, and his slowly deteriorating illness, has left Shores wondering why the country he fought for doesn’t do a little more to help the hundreds of thousands of veterans.  

“How do you settle in?” Shores said. “There’s no transition from watching your buddy die one week, to coming to America and listening to a woman complain about choice.”

Shores was supposed to hear back from the Clay County Court’s IT department on Monday, but he didn’t receive a call. He has tried to submit necessary documents online, but keeps receiving errors.

“I have no clue why it wasn’t reading properly, finally I had to ask a person to look over my shoulder and see if I was doing something wrong, and they couldn’t see what I was doing wrong,” Shores said.

“It is absolutely a validation of where we stand in today’s society,” Shores said. “When the entities or individuals that swear an oath and some make the ultimate sacrifice in defending the American way of life in their service to the Armed Forces or other positions of great sacrifice, veterans should not have to continue fighting, not only for their dignity and respect, but for fairness of treatment due to those sacrifices such as disabilities that are a direct result of their service.

“When I joined the military and I said I would die for my country, I didn’t know they would take it literally. For a time I thought I would hate my country for what I am going through, but I love my country. It’s easier to love than to hate, hate just eats you up inside. I just need to survive, to survive, and to go on in this world being the best person I can be.”

Kevin Shores, middle, in the Navy circa 1988 – Facebook

 

High costs of addiction

The legal underworld of addiction, incarceration, and wasted resources

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Justin Lee Dietrich was an addict. A long rap sheet haunted him, barring him from joining a society that rejected him at every turn. Court documents show he had issues with sobriety, was ordered by Cass County District Court to attend sobriety programs, chemical dependency evaluations, and given two years supervised probation, after he pled guilty to terrorizing charges in 2016.

Before four Fargo Police SWAT shooters took the 32-year-old man’s life on March 12 for posing an “imminent deadly threat,” in West Fargo, he asked to live in F5 Project housing, but the nonprofit organization that coordinates services and living spaces for released felons had no beds available, a Facebook post by the organization’s founder, Adam Martin, stated.

His family tried to get Dietrich committed but he was turned down every time, as he didn’t meet the “danger to himself or others” standard.

“I think about all the times police were called, how the officers with Fargo PD were patient with him when it would have been far easier to do otherwise, but also how hiring the right defense attorney can repeatedly help a person avoid any real consequences,” Matthew Bring, Dietrich’s brother-in-law, wrote in a Facebook post.

Justin Dietrich and his dog, Harley Bell – Facebook

“I think about how he’s been on probation with little or no actual supervision or oversight, and about the arrest warrant that was issued more than three months ago but never served. It’s frustrating, thinking about this broken system in which his family try so hard to get help from the very institutions set up to do so, and are repeatedly told there’s nothing more that can be done.”

Dietrich’s sister, Alyson Jean Bring, emphasized that she and her family tried repeatedly to seek help for her brother.

“My family filed numerous civil commitments in an effort to get Justin help and every time we were told by Southeast Human Services that he didn’t meet the legal standard of being a danger to himself or others,” Bring said in an email. “At one point I was literally told that we wouldn’t be able to commit him unless he was found with a gun in his hand and threatening to take his own life.”

Southeast Human Services personnel took 15 minutes to interview her brother, but would not consider her family’s extensive knowledge of his usage history, she said.

Bring, a former attorney with the Cass County State’s Attorney’s Office, said her brother was supposed to be supervised, but found little oversight. When the courts ordered Dietrich to go through treatment, the stays were too short. Counselors continuously had to justify treatment procedures to insurance companies, Bring said.

“In sum, the very institutions that are set up to help people are not working.”

Dietrich loved motorcycles and his pet, a Rottweiler named Harley. He had a beautiful singing voice, once sang at the North Dakota Adult and Teen Challenge approximately a decade ago. Friends and family said he was humorous, had an infectious smile, someone who went out of his way to make people feel important.

Once, he saved a neighbor from hanging himself. He cut down the rope, took the person to get food and groceries, and saved the person from suicide.

“It’s no secret that Justin was an addict and struggled with this disease for many years,” Bring wrote in her brother’s eulogy. “But I think it’s important to stress that each one of us has issues and our issues don’t define us. Addiction was merely part of his life.”

Bring also works as an attorney handling DUI cases, never before realizing how widespread addiction and alcoholism in the area are, affecting people from all walks of life.

“I don’t think the public at large realizes how big of an issue this is and that most of the people who enter the criminal justice system are either chemically dependent, mentally ill, or both,” Bring said.

Her brother was someone who helped whenever and however he could, Bring said, and she hopes to honor his memory by testifying at the next legislative session to try and implement positive changes for those struggling with addiction.

“I think the frustrating part for me is that, while everyone has issues, for some reason addiction is so incredibly stigmatized, and I think a big part of that is because, while it’s easy for people to hide most issues, typically addiction eventually can’t be hidden and becomes public,” Bring said in an email. “I think our society has made some strides in viewing addiction as a disease just like other mental health or physical problems, but I think we still have a long ways to go.”

Justin Dietrich’s dog, Harley Bell, and a Harley – Facebook

Adam Martin
The name, F5 Project, is a double entendre. It stands for the reset function key, but also because Adam Martin has five felonies on his record.

“I’m not a mental health professional, I’m just a guy who has a bunch of felonies who is an addict, that found a solution that works,” Martin, founder of the F5 Project, said from his office. Feet propped up on his desk, he’s the picture of calm in a turbulent world. His office is behind the only white frame among a dozen hard oak antique doors on the eighth floor of the Black Building.

Although the F5 Project is barely two years young, he’s grown the organization from nothing to seven houses that help put roofs over felons’ heads. His organization’s goal is to lower recidivism and homelessness rates through education. Martin calls his organization the “anti-disenfranchised movement” because he breaks all the social rules: answers the cell phone at 2am, is active with those under his care on social media, and goes to inmates before they’re released to find out what they want.

Adam Martin, founder of the F5 Project, describing the difficulties of the current justice system – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Martin knew Dietrich, called him a “super awesome dude.” Dietrich was someone that Martin enjoyed, and not the person the media has painted. Current Fargo city codes was one of the reasons why Dietrich was turned away shortly before he was gunned down after failing to comply with police demands.

In Fargo, a house or unit is allowed to hold three non-related people, no matter how many rooms are in the house.

“It’s an archaic code that robs many of opportunity,” Martin said. Because of a previous infraction of the city codes, city leaders and others have called him a slumlord. He’s facing potential fines. Some ask him why college students are able to get away with breaking the same city code, while he, housing felons, cannot.

“My argument for that or my belief on that is I’m not mad that the college students are getting away with it, I think they should,” Martin said. “I think there is a big problem with housing in this community and it affects people with backgrounds and it affects college students. What does that tell me? It affects people below the poverty line.”

A legislative incentive passed in 2017 offering landlords the chance to collect double security deposits for felons looking for a place to live, is about the only help the state has given. The law, introduced as House Bill 1220 by the House Political Subdivision Committee, overlooks a crucial factor.

“They totally missed the boat on what the real problem is,” Martin said. “It’s not just the felony background, the majority of people coming out of jails or prisons don’t have money. Again, we’re creating opportunity for people with money.”

Money is the largest contributing factor in attracting the help people really need, Martin said. Proper funding is also the dividing factor between nonprofits such as the F5 Project and others as they’re all chasing the same donations and grants.

Money – billions, if not trillions of taxpayer dollars – is also being wasted every year keeping felons in a rut from which they cannot climb out.

Frank Hunkler
Dressed in corduroys, armed with a Pilot G-2 fine-point pen and a thick notebook of data, Frank Hunkler paused before speaking about the day he decided to commit suicide.

He’s a decorated Vietnam War veteran, a felon, an addict, has had PTSD since childhood, suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, and has been a full-time volunteer peer mentor in the Fargo-Moorhead area for 37 years. He includes himself as one of the 256,934 reported civilian non-institutional people in America who were told they cannot work if they wanted access to health care including mental health. At a minimum of $10 an hour, that’s more than $5 billion in lost wages, and approximately $900 million in lost federal taxes every year.

He knows about addiction, started using drugs in high school and went to prison in 1979, back in the day when felons paid their dues, but were welcomed back to society after finishing their sentences.  

“It’s harder to get clean and stay clean today than it was in 1980 or 1990, much more difficult,” Hunkler said.

Why?

“Access and prejudice,” Hunkler said. “In 1980 we did our crimes we did our time, we did our crimes and did our time. In 1980, very few people went to jail for drugs, almost unheard of.”

Frank Hunkler describing his path as a veteran, an addict, a felon, to recovery – photograph by C.S. Hagen

The war on drugs and the war on terror are pieces to the puzzle behind mass incarceration, Hunkler believes. America has five percent of the world’s population with 25 percent of the world’s prison population, and the hours of lost work, lost taxpayer dollars, and lost productivity, add up.

Nationally, the number of people enrolled in drug treatment programs has halved in recent years, although the demand for mental health treatment continues to rise, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Budget cuts to support the war on drugs and the war on terror, coupled with widespread disregard and an automation of human services have left addicts, felons, and the needy, forgotten.

Among comparable countries, America has the highest rate of death from mental health and substance abuse disorders. The number is almost off the charts, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, with America double the rest of the world in death rates per 100,0000 people in 2015.

America’s death rates due to accidental poisonings or drug overdoses per 100,000 people is also twice as high as the worldwide average, numbering 12 people per 100,000 in 2013, compared to 4.9 per 100,000 in comparable countries.

Stress is the common denominator linking addiction, the current criminal justice system, recidivism, or the habitual relapse into crime or antisocial behavior patterns, Hunkler said.

“The process of seeking help, in preventive ways, is not in vogue,” Hunkler said. “The inhumane and failure-inducing requirements of seeking help in an emergency take a simple medical emergency to a personal catastrophe in which stress levels are exponentially raised.”

Although Hunkler has been clean for 37 years, his PTSD could bring him to suicide. Returning to drug use is not an option, he said. Suicide would be the only choice.

“With PTSD it could happen easily, not today, but over a period of months,” Hunkler said. “Right at that edge where life-or-death decisions are made every day by persons with use, abuse, mental health, addiction issues. I believe anyone who has even short-term struggles with mental health, use, abuse, and addiction issues has symptoms of PTSD. Often less from the struggles than from the lack of 24/7 access to emergency facilities and safety from themselves and others, forcing them to return to the situations that are killing them. Each refusal of care is another traumatizing event.”

His PTSD stems from childhood abuse, he said. He remembers little of his war experience, but has the medals to prove he fought with valor. As a gay man who lost 52 of his friends during the AIDS epidemic, his battle has been even more difficult than others, but he draws and writes almost every day to remind himself that people are basically good, and he must help them.

On social media, he begins all his posts with three simple words: “I love you.”

I am forgiven – by Frank Hunkler

Remembering the day in 2003 when he decided to commit suicide didn’t come easily. While walking home, and passing in front of the offices of Minnesota Legal Services, after the Fargo VA refused help one last time, the director came running toward him. Hunkler said the director must have noticed that all was not well with him at the time. He was trying to get help, but insurance premiums and deductibles were out of reach. Medical bills, lawyer bills, were eating up his income.

“I was not depressed, I was freaked out by the world,” Hunkler said. “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is progressive and fatal. I had been clean from drug use since 1980. Using was not an option.  Suicide held the only dignity I knew.”

The director of Minnesota Legal Services pulled him into the entry of the building and asked him why he was not on disability, Hunkler said.

“No one had ever asked me that. I said because I could not afford the expensive tests needed to find out if I had any real problems. I could not afford insurance and the VA had just told me they would not serve me under any circumstances. I had too many confrontations with staff over being refused help. I was a security risk to myself and the facility.

“She told me they would help me get help. I had to promise to quit work and promise to not work again ever, get completely destitute by a certain date to qualify for services, and 300 hours of their help later I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, PTSD, learning disabilities, and was given Social Security disability and a permanent VA disability pension.

Past has passed away – by Frank Hunkler

$1.015 trillion: a drop in the judicial bucket
“Since I got on disability I have 29,000 and some hours that are lost,” Hunkler said. “Taxpayers have paid me over $500,000 in 14 years in monthly checks. I get a check every month, but that doesn’t mean I got medical health. I was under this crazy notion that if you’re on social security disability you get medical help. I was given a disability pension and then told to go away. I assumed that meant I got psychiatric help, but there is no such connection.

“How do you describe this to people that not only are they paying me to leave the work force, just to get medical help, I don’t know if you know this but when veterans get a disability check – it was not created to give us medical help. It’s basically a lawsuit, where each veteran is expected to get a million bucks. Congress did not mean this to be like Social Security disability to keep us alive, it was meant to replace the money we would likely lose in our lifetime.”

Hunkler is a part of the aggregate economic burden of incarceration to taxpayers, which exceeds $1 trillion every year, according to Advancing Justice, a Los Angeles based nonprofit and civil rights organization, and the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation, at Washington University in St. Louis.

Costs to corrections are approximately $91 billion, and lost wages – calculated at minimum wage – add up to more than $70 billion every year.

Reduced life earnings of those behind bars total more than $230 billion, while costs of non-fatal injuries to the incarcerated total $28 billion.

The aggregate cost to society swells from there, which including other aspects already adds up to more than $490 billion. Felons have adverse health effects from incarceration and poor health care. Infant mortality rates increase. There are divorce complications. Children’s educational level decreases, thereby lowering wages when they become adults. Child welfare costs go up; homelessness increases. There are increased criminality issues with children of incarcerated parents. Property values in troublesome areas decrease. Divorce rates rise, and the interest on judicial debt inflates.

In total, the cost per year for the current criminal justice system backing the war on drugs, the war on terror, and the current judicial system is $1,015,000,000,000, most of which is taxpayer dollars, according to statistics released by Advancing Justice.

“Expenditures are not adding value to the economy and are not, for the most part, improving the productivity of the incarcerated person and their families or adding value to the quality of life in the community for generations to come,” Hunkler said.

The costs do not end there. In 2018, the federal and state budgets for incarceration, probation, and parole is $80.7 billion. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, declared more than $50 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services, or HSS, announced $80.03 billion, and the Department of Education needs $59 billion.

Although numbers have decreased slightly in recent years, an average of 2.2 million people are behind bars on any given day, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics. If 2.2 million people had minimum wage jobs at 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, at an hourly rate of $10, the federal government loses more than $4.2 billion in taxes every year.

Wages earned by America’s total population of approximately 138 million taxpayers every year to pay for incarcerating 2.2 million people totals at $9.03 trillion, of which a total of $1.2 trillion is used to pay for the current incarceration system, according to Advancing Justice.

Additional unintended costs extend to more than half a million prison guards, who suffer from PTSD at more than double the rate of soldiers, and with suicide rates twice as high as the general public, according to analysts.

Simple numbers show the fiscal burden of incarceration is far more expensive than offering help to the millions of addicts sent into jails across America. The national average for treating one person in detox is $1,500, with an inpatient cost of $20,000 a month, according to the Center for Disease Control. For a fraction of the annual price to taxpayers, more than 11 million addicts – which is also the approximate number of people who enter jails in the United States every year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation – could be treated for $375 billion.

Few jails offer addiction treatment services. At Cass County Jail, Captain Andrew Frobig is working toward alternatives to incarceration for low-bail offenders, but doesn’t have treatment services, yet, he said. Most help comes from the outside, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the Sex Offender Program, the F5 Project, the group Hunkler works with, Narcotics Anonymous, or other nonprofit groups.   

“It is very difficult to find anyone who claims, in 2018, that prisons and jails are for rehabilitation,” Hunkler said. “The inmates are not getting mental health help, are not being financially productive, are not learning skills, and the prison guards are losing out too.”  

[Editor’s note: For more information pertaining to the criminal justice system in Fargo and North Dakota, a February 21 story pertaining to the “High costs of low bail” can be found here: link.]

I am in shape politically – by Frank Hunkler

Center for heroes and excellence
Frank Hunkler has a dream. His dream is to create a brick and mortar building, a one-stop 24/7 emergency center where anyone with a use, abuse, addiction, or mental health issue can go, keep safe from themselves and others, have all their emergency needs met, food to eat, a place to rest if needed, and given an advocate to get them connected to all the services they need.

“The community would guarantee to leave no one behind, get them the services they need, and find a way to pay for them,” Hunkler said. “Just like with heart disease, lung disease, type II Diabetes and other mostly preventable diseases. The commitment of the metropolitan area community would be to leave no one behind and provide the seamless services needed to return the person to maximum productivity as quickly as possible, no questions asked. To walk through the door and ask for help would make each person a community hero.

“By diverting funds, diverting facilities, ending the war on drugs, there is money enough, and the idea of this center in this town, number one, we need to have a campaign that encourages people to ask for help,” Hunkler said. “That’s the first problem, that’s probably 80 percent of the problem. Asking for help when they need it. That’s the heroism part.

“There’s no reason that anyone should have to use in this town, if we had access. There are enough treatment centers, homeless shelters, mutual aid agencies, if they had a central place where anyone could come to 24/7, I actually believe, right now as I know this community, there are days of the year where if we have that one center, existing facilities could serve every person who walks through that door without adding a bed.”

Fargo’s metropolitan area is smart enough and wealthy enough, Hunkler said, to become the first city in the world to help all our kids, felons, and addicts, and turn no one away.

Such a center would bring together all the agencies and services, voluntary and professional, Hunkler said.

“As each person is served, seamlessly and as a whole person, all agencies and services will benefit and maximize their potential,” Hunkler said. “At one time or another in our lives, we will likely all need those services unless we are wealthy enough or connected enough to get services we need when and where we want them. For now, only members of Congress and the very wealthiest have such access. A Medal of Honor winner cannot walk into a VA facility and demand services. A member of Congress can and does not have to demand them or stand in line for services.”  

Adam Martin, of the F5 Project, compares the judicial system to the educational system, and finds that many of today’s issues start in schools.

“We have a whole social structure built on helping those who are convenient, and I think about that all the time,” Martin said. “We have this idea of what is not normal, and when something is not normal, we involve the police. Police have become more about arresting to create a culture than arresting to create public safety.”

Martin said he was in learning disability classes when he was in school in Fargo. The system is based on automation, and doing what is convenient.

“Let’s be open and honest about it,” Martin said. “Are you doing the same thing the educational system has done, and you’re sending people to learning disability classes because they’re inconvenient, they’re not normal, they’re not like other kids? Are you identifying them with learning disabilities because you suck as a teacher and you’re not actual teachers you’re reading out of a book? Or are you actually trying to create an environment to learn for all people. I think that kind of mentality has gone into the justice system, it’s gotten into even the technology world.

“All the systems in America are based on low hanging fruit. Nobody really wants to work.”

Rules on top of laws is not the answer to solving the current criminal justice system, Martin said.

“We’ve turned into a very legalistic nation,” Martin said. “If you’re familiar with the Bible and Pharisees and legalism, they were putting rules on top of laws and then holding people accountable as if it were a law, so that they wouldn’t actually break the law.”

Joyful performance – by Frank Hunkler

Criminal justice reform is not ‘hug a thug’
While preparing for her nomination at the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Convention, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is up for reelection this year, said she would support criminal justice reform.

“On one condition,” Heitkamp said. “That we have re-entry services. And I will tell you why. I think that if you take someone out and you say ‘Okay, you’re serving time for a drug offense that didn’t jeopardize anyone’s life, you weren’t caught with guns,’ whatever the line is, I would say that’s fine, but you need to make sure they stay in treatment and that they have opportunities that help them transition their life back.

“If we don’t do it with that, we will have re-offenses, in fact I know that’s already happening in North Dakota, and that will frustrate law enforcement, it will frustrate the public, and it’s the wrong way to do it.”

Heitkamp stated she wants to know what reentry plans would include.

“When they come out of prison, how do they come back? They come back to the exact same conditions, and friends and associates that basically led to their incarceration. We need a reentry program for federal prisoners. This is one of the things that I’ve been pushing and doing a lot of work on.”

Former North Dakota Attorney General Tim Purdon said the criminal justice system is a three-legged stool: one leg is enforcement – some people are dangerous and need to be kept from society – a definition both Martin and Hunkler also agree with.

The second leg is crime prevention, and the third is reentry, Purdon said.

“Criminal justice reform is an issue that over the last three or four years – setting aside the current Attorney General – is something that has had large bipartisan support,” Purdon said. “There’s been a recognition in this country that we cannot afford to continue our criminal justice system on the road we’re on because the cost of running prisons, federal and locally, is exceeding our ability as a society to pay for it.”

He is a part of the Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, and currently a partner with Robins Kaplan LLP, and said money can be redirected toward crime prevention and better delivery of mental health and addiction services.

“If you take the dollars that are being spent to warehouse people who have addiction and mental health problems, you take those dollars and redirect them at crime prevention programs that those people can get the chemical dependency treatment they need, they can get the mental health services they need,” Purdon said. “We are woefully behind a minimal constitutional standard for mental health care in the state of North Dakota.

“Look at the people coming out of prison and look at their recidivism rate. If you reduce that recidivism rate, give them a chance and integrate them back into society, you’ve reduced your crime rate.

“Reducing the recidivism rate isn’t hug a thug, this is making the community safer by making sure the folks coming back don’t reoffend.”

Concentrate on all three legs and incarceration rates will drop, he said.

Mandatory minimum sentences are one aspect of the current criminal justice system that needs change, Purdon said.

“Mandatory minimum sentences are a sledgehammer for every case, whether the case is an elephant or a gnat. We’ve got to get away from mandatory minimum sentences, particularly for people with addiction problems.”

The issue has become a hot topic today because the opioid crisis affects all levels of society, he said.

“The opioid crisis, unlike past drug crisis, hits populations in this country that have political power,” Purdon said. “Why are we talking about the opioid addiction as a national crisis as opposed to the crack epidemic? Why are we looking at it as a public safety issue instead of purely a criminal justice issue? It’s because its impacting communities that have some political power.

“It’s sad that that’s the case, but that is the case. There is a possibility that when you start to look at opioid addiction as a medical issue — and all addiction should be viewed as a medical issue, in my opinion — not necessarily a criminal justice issue but a health care medical issue, those folks need treatment, and hopefully that can support some of this recent bipartisan support for comprehensive criminal justice reform.”

Other states have begun taking dollars away from locking people up and putting funds toward treatment, and have reduced crime rates while reducing prison populations, Purdon said.

While mental health issues continue to be put on the political back burners, organizations like the F5 Project and volunteers like Frank Hunkler plan to continue struggling to find beds for the addicted, jobs for felons, words for the hurting.

“All that is lacking is people of goodwill putting partisan opinions and feelings aside and sitting as equals around a round table, with all stakeholders, and win this war on stigma and fear,” Hunkler said. “This fear of addiction and mental illness is based only in itself – fear.”

“It’s going to have to be a lot of awareness of the similarities between felons and non-felons, the similarities between the education system and the justice system, and how they’re treated, and the similarities between mom and dad approaches when it comes to people with felony backgrounds,” Adam Martin said. “When people see that and break the matrix in their minds, that’s when the help is really going to come.”

Andrew Gregerson, a drug addict, showing his scars and tattoos while in Cass County Jail – photograph by Logan Macrae

 

The high costs of low bail

Overcrowded jails and millions in costs to the taxpayer

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – To hundreds of Fargo’s inmates, a C-Note-sized bail might as well be a million dollars. Unaffordable.

On any given day the city’s law enforcement brings those who break the law to jail. It’s their job. Some offenders are violent. All are entitled to a phone call and an orange wardrobe. Some are drug abusers, addicted. Others are repeat offenders, and then there are those who don’t see jail as any kind of deterrent.

A February 8 snapshot of the Cass County Jail’s roster showed that 238 people were behind bars, 212 males, 36 females. A total of 68 people were in custody without bail, meaning they were deemed flight risks by the court, due to serious felony charges, prior criminal convictions.

HPR Magazine cover by Raul Gomez

Twenty-four people were locked up on less than $1,000 bail, according to Captain Andrew Frobig of Cass County Jail. Their bail amounts ranged from $100 to $750, with the majority hovering around $500, and they were arrested on drug charges, assault charges, parole violations, or disorderly conduct. A second snapshot, taken on February 15, showed 245 people were incarcerated, with 38 people under $1,000 bail.

With an approximate cost to taxpayers of $95 per day to keep a person in the local jail, those that could not afford bail – or did not pay bail – ran Cass County approximately $2,280 on February 8. On February 15, the costs increased to $3,610. While in jail, inmates’ health costs are covered; they have a bed and three squares. For those without homes – a desperate few – such ill-fated security may be a tempting offer.

“The reasons for not posting are also subject to individual circumstances,” Frobig said.

“I know there are cases where lack of access to funds is the issue. I know there are circumstances where the person would rather sit and accrue credit in hopes of an eventual plea bargain for time served. I know there are cases where they have burned bridges with all those they know who might help them, and I have spoken to parents in the past who have left them in jail because they felt it was the only remaining option to keep them alive – due to extreme drug or alcohol addictions.”

The “jail churn” is difficult to predict, because of the numbers, that change daily, even hourly, and the sheer volume of those cycled through the system on their way to trial. If the jail’s snapshot list is used as an average, however, the taxpayers’ costs add up quickly. Every month more than $680,000 is used in taking care of inmates who cannot or won’t make low bail amounts. Annually, the financial costs could rocket to more than $800,000, about an eighth of Cass County Jail’s total inmate expenditures.

One inmate, jailed on heroin charges, has been incarcerated for more than a month on $150 bail. Another person has spent approximately 44 days in jail on terrorizing charges with a $500 bail. A third inmate arrested on December 4 for disorderly conduct and contact with bodily fluids has been under a $750 bail, while another arrested on December 16 for assaulting a peace officer is on $560 bail.

Total bail amounts: $1,960.

Costs to taxpayers for all four inmates: $23,160, and growing.

Excluding the first six months of 2017, when inmate intakes were higher, the daily average headcount at Cass County Jail is 241, with nearly $23,000 spent every day. Monthly, the costs run approximately $686,850, making an annual total of up to $8.3 million.

With less than a month left until the jail’s annual budget year ends, Cass County Jail has spent $9,602,901 for inmate care in 2017, which includes federal funds of $2,005,439 — also taxpayer money.

“Our budget doesn’t include things like light, and heat, and water. Those are county facilities,” Frobig said. “I take into account our itemized budget on what we can spend on things. You are absolutely correct from a fiscal standpoint that we spend far more than the actual bails cost, which is exacerbated when you add in medical expenses on a case by case basis.”

Jails have fixed costs which cannot be reduced, and incremental costs when the jail is full and more people are in need of individual care, Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said. At capacity, Cass County Jail has 348 beds.

“A lot of those costs are fixed costs, so it takes a certain amount to run that jail whether you’ve got 200 people in it, or 250, or 230, it’s all going to be the same amount,” Burdick said. “We still have to keep the heat on, we still have to keep the power on, and we still have to keep the jail staffed, so it’s a difficult number, I would think, to try to get a handle on, although I have not tried.”

Although a precise cost for low-bail detainees is difficult to calculate, the sheer number of cases has recently raised eyebrows, from the legislature to government-appointed committees, to study the issue.

“As far as what to do about it, the state is actually starting to take a look at this very issue,” Frobig said. Captain Frobig has been asked to join a subcommittee of the Justice Reinvestment Committee, Burdick said, that is charged with reexamining the current bail process and find alternatives to incarceration.

Andrew Gregerson showing the scar on his neck left after a suicide attempt – photograph by Logan Macrae

King pain
Since he turned 11, Andrew Gregerson, 31, has spent five years and two months a free man. He grew up as a ward of the state, inside juvenile centers, jails, and prisons.

“I’ve been in almost every single juvenile facility in North Dakota,” Gregerson said. “I didn’t have a solid guidance into adulthood, and unfortunately right after I turned 18, I went to prison.”

He’s well spoken, a registered member of the Crow Agency in Montana’s Little Big Horn Reservation. Prison tattoos and scars across his body tell a tale no 31-year-old should have to experience. His rap sheet fills a letter-sized page, filled with assault, terrorizing, shoplifting, burglary, and criminal mischief charges. Today, he’s in Cass County Jail on $750 cash bond on his first drug charges: attempting to manufacture methamphetamines, a felony, and other misdemeanor charges, some drug-related.

“I knew what right and wrong was, but I was ignorant,” Gregerson said. “I was rebellious. Over the years, I had a drug problem, and I really didn’t care where my actions led for quite a few years.”

While sitting in Cass County Jail during a year-long stint, he slit both wrists and his throat on his 20th birthday. Less than inch below the scar on his wrist is a tattoo he gave himself – a dotted line and the words “Cut here.” Another tattoo on his forearm, with a single needle, reads “Pure Evil.” Crude and faded ink across his left knuckles says: “King.” Across his right: “Pain.” King Pain.

With a repetitive history of getting clean, then  turning back to drugs, then getting clean again, every time tragedy struck he turned to drugs, he said. Before his last arrest he was smoking meth to the point where he lost 35 pounds in 17 days.

He was arrested more than a month ago, but has only a cellphone to offer up for bail.

“I would bail out if I could,” Gregerson said. After his last stint in prison, he found a fulltime job in Bismarck making $17 an hour, but lost the job when he was arrested in a Fargo hotel room. Life wasn’t going the way he wanted, he said, and like other times when tragedy struck he turned back to his old friends: cocaine, heroin, meth, marijuana, acid, crack, magic mushrooms. He’s tried them all, but preferred acid. Rarely drinks, doesn’t like cigarettes.

He lifts up his prison-orange shirt to show a scar where someone stabbed him in 2007 in West Fargo. The wound went through his liver and into his kidney, and he nearly died from the assault after he chased the attacker with the 13-inch knife still protruding from his chest.

Andrew Gregerson, a drug addict, showing his scars and tattoos – photograph by Logan Macrae

In 2012, he also tried to commit suicide, but failed.

“I tried hanging myself in my garage, and when I jumped off my toolbox the rope broke,” Gregerson said. “I’m lucky to be alive for several different reasons.”

Since his last arrest, his cash bail has been reduced from 10 percent of $10,000 to $750, but he still can’t afford the payment. He can sell his cellphone for $300, but it’s still not enough. He said his life changed when his daughter, usually stoic, broke down in tears before him.

“My daughter needs me. As sad as it is, it took me many years…the day she came and saw me and she started crying and told me how much of a disappointment I was and that I had broke her trust, it’s like I woke up after years of being asleep.

“I couldn’t believe what I did to her. That’s my fault. Her tears, her in counseling, it’s all on me. Never up to this point did I realize that, so no, I don’t want to be in here.”

Gregerson realizes his story may fall on deaf ears. “I’m sure a lot of people say ‘Oh, I’m done with drugs,’ and I hate to sing the same tune, but to see my daughter cry like that and to realize it’s all my fault, I’ve never seen that before. As soon as I get out, I’m going to go, I want to get treatment. I want to change. Never again will I put tears on my daughter’s face. Never. I will not be responsible for that.”

He holds up two cards from the North Dakota Department of Human Services and presses them against the prison glass.

“I had to face not only losing her, I had to sit there in my cell and think about all the things I lost, like my personal possessions, and also sit there, burned in my brain now, my daughter’s face, crying on the phone behind the glass sitting there telling me those things.

“I need drug treatment. Sitting here is wasting my time.”

Andrew Gregerson lifts his shirt to show where he was stabbed and nearly killed – photograph by Logan Macrae

‘Huge paradigm shift’
Captain Andrew Frobig didn’t grow up wanting to be a peace officer. He became licensed out of necessity. With a degree in political science, he tried law school, but decided on social work and criminal justice. He started “on the line” at the Cass County Jail around 2004, and climbed the ladder to his current position.

He understands jail, the judicial system, and the partisan politics behind criminal laws. When new inmates come in, he jokes with them. Frobig also understands the current system isn’t working, and the laws are keeping some behind bars that shouldn’t be there.

“If you think about jail, that’s all we’re doing: food, clothing, shelter,” Frobig said. “We’re trying to do more than that here, but that’s basically what jail is. We’ve solved that problem, so now we can start working at these other things over here.”

In 2017, Frobig received funding to experiment on alternatives, and he has begun forming a small group of social watchdogs called the Community Supervision Unit. After the county flirted with work release programs and failed due to an uptick in drug smuggling, Frobig believes he has now found a possible way to lower costs, help ensure court appearances, and keep the area safe.

“I think I’ve got something better,” Frobig said. “The idea is we are going to take the people that would otherwise have qualified for work release, and use the new GPS technology, state-of-the-art tracking systems, so those that are sentenced to our custody, which are the people that would have been on work release before.”

Qualifying arrestees will live at home and wear GPS monitors, so personnel can track them. Such tactics have already been experimented with and were successful, Frobig said.

“For the money they spend per day here, I know we can have things in the community attacking those problems, and far cheaper.”

Two of the most frequent charges Frobig notices are: failure to appear, and failure to pay fines or fees. Currently, Cass County has more than 2,000 bench warrants for people who failed to appear in court.

“Whatever alternatives we discover, we have to address that failure-to-appear rate, at least not make it any worse,” Frobig said. “My point is that we identified that this was an issue that a lot of folks were languishing in jail over the course of any given time, the bail amounts suggested judges expected them to get out, but for one reason or another they didn’t.

“I operate with that assumption: the judges don’t have an issue with them getting out so why is there a need for any bail at all?”

The Community Supervision Unit will be comprised of four police officers acting as social workers with arresting powers, Frobig said. He’s looking for officers who may have had problems in the past, those who understand addictions; community providers who will perform case by case care. They will track inmates, drive them to court appearances if needed, help with rehabilitation — including drug treatment — and with assistance after release.

Jobs and apartments for former convicts are difficult to find, and if not for organizations like the F-M Dorothy Day House, Cooper House Apartments, and Adam Martin’s F5 Project, many ex-convicts may take to the streets, Frobig said. Despite the limited options they do have, some still end up back in jail.

“Their job now is to find solutions,” Frobig said. “Creative cops are something that sometimes we’re wary of creating, but I want them to have a wide discretion to be able solve the immediate problems at hand, and not keep score.

“It’s a huge paradigm shift. Let’s make progress in solving these problems of people assigned to them to make them less likely to reoffend. Paying for services based on results rather than services delivered, which is a remarkable shift.”

Instead of working general algorithms or massive analysis techniques, Frobig wants evidence-based programs for individualized assessment and care.

“If three out of four are making progress, then what we’re doing is working, and let’s continue to pay for it,” Frobig said. “We have a tendency to keep score by arrests and convictions. This is going to flip that on its head. We will try to do whatever it takes to help them succeed.”

Federal and state monies could be better spent on community-based drug treatment and job training, according to analysis. Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick agreed, saying new technologies could be of assistance while the state reassess its incarceration regulations.

“In addition to studies and analysis tools, new and better technologies may help us get there as well,” Burdick said. “Being able to track and monitor people on pretrial release, so we know they are doing the right thing, or can do something about it if they’re doing the wrong thing, may be helpful here.

“There are ways out there I think, I am not sure of the prices yet or how best to utilize them, but to keep track of people in a meaningful way that may help reduce the need to have as many people in jail, and how you blend those new technologies with the algorithms or analysis techniques, I don’t know yet, but hopefully that is where our inquiries will take us.”  

Jerry Yonkedeh talking about his bail issues – photograph by Logan Macrae

Me, myself, and God
Jerry Yonkedeh, 25, has spent nearly 50 days in Cass County Jail since his arrest on January 1. He’s charged with terrorizing with a dangerous weapon; he said the claims are lies. His wallet containing his last $200 was stolen during a New Years Eve hotel party, and he can’t make cash bail of $500.

Before incarceration, he was making enough for a single man to live, about $800 a month working for a local flaxseed company. He shared a North Fargo efficiency apartment, split the rent with a roommate, and has a car, a 2003 Hyundai Sonata, which he can’t drive because his license was revoked for a DUI in 2015.

“Now, I’m stuck,” Yonkedeh said. “Me sitting here is not benefiting me. I have no family here, no contact, it’s just me, myself, and God, that’s about it. I’m willing to appear in court, because I know I am innocent. I’m willing to sell my car, right now, for $500, or $600, just sell my car and bond me out.”

Yonkedeh was born in Liberia, and moved to Minnesota with family when he was 10 years old.

He doesn’t want to be in jail, but doesn’t know who to call. Can’t remember his father’s telephone number. Doesn’t know if he’s lost his job of nearly three years. After his DUI sometimes he walked miles to work or rode a bicycle; sometimes his boss would arrange to pick him up.

One lesson he has learned is “trust nobody,” Yonkedeh said. Jail food is bland, and he trades it for noodles when he can’t stand the taste. He grew up poor, and is still poor, too poor to pay bail, and so he is waiting in Cass County Jail for his April trial date.

“I want to get out and get back on my feet,” Yonkedeh said. Daily, he watches an hour of television, does pushups, and reads the Bible. “I’ve got to learn from this, I have no excuses not to go to work and not to go to school. That was my New Year’s resolution: work and go to school. But the devil, you know. God has a plan.”

The social costs
Two of the most frequent charges Captain Andrew Frobig notices are failure to appear, and failure to pay fines or fees. Currently, Cass County has more than 2,000 bench warrants for people who failed to appear in court.

“Cash bail is typically intended, in part, to provide incentive to appear and also to go towards satisfying imposed fees and fines, so any alternatives that are considered will need to take those issues into account,” Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said.

The legal process begins with an arraignment, where a public defender may be assigned to a defendant, and based on information including criminal record, place of residence, and job sustainability, bail is set. Defense attorneys can petition a judge for lower bail at any time, Burdick said.

“What that bail amount should be is discretionary with the court,” Burdick said. “We are as a judicial system interested in trying to focus on what is sometimes referred to as evidence-based practices. If you look around the country, you’ll find that there are different communities or states that have different approaches to setting up bail, and different approaches to try and get more information on what somebody is, so they can make a knowledgeable decision with regard to pretrial release.”

In the past, algorithms, or statistical counting, are used to predict if a defendant will return to court or is a risk to the public.

“It’s not my intent, I don’t think it’s anyone’s intent, to try and just keep people in jail because we feel like it,” Burdick said. “That’s what convictions are for and sentences are the result of convictions, but we do want people to return.”

But even Burdick, with his years of experience, realizes the current bail system may need an adjustment. “If I was to say that I think we doing things perfectly, and we have no room to improve, I would be an idiot,” Burdick said.

“Here’s my general take on life. My job as a prosecutor is to hold people accountable for doing wrong things, but to do it in a fair way. Having said that, I recognize that people when in pretrial custody, the pretrial custody may have a negative impact on their lives, by causing them to lose their jobs and by causing additional strain to their family relationships and the like, and while it is true that that should have been a consideration in their own mind before committing an act, I still want to try and do things in the right way. We are using the best tools that we have right now, I think those tools could certainly be sharpened.”

Frobig couldn’t comment on the social costs of an inmate failing to make bail, such as losing a job, property, a car towed from a public street, even rejection by family, friends, or loss of status, but said that historically, jail administrations have tended to approach crime problems by determining trends or averages.

“The approach we are just now beginning to transition to, in partnerships between government and private providers, is to recognize that each individual situation is unique, as are the priorities or primary needs of each individual, and it is more cost-effective to identify and target those primary needs with specific and targeted services.”

Sometimes, people want to go back to jail because life on the outside is simply too difficult.

“I’ve seen it in the past where someone who was avoiding an old warrant ended up turning themselves in – out of the blue – which happened to coincide with a serious medical condition that was previously untreated,” Frobig said.

Other reasons could include homelessness. Some people have shoplifted in order to get arrested to quit smoking, or committed a crime to accompany a friend in jail.

Bench warrants for not paying court-mandated fines and fees can quickly escalate and land a struggling ex-convict back in jail. Typically, such cases are reduced to civil orders, or they choose to pay off their debt $20 a day while sitting in jail.

Such a strategy makes no sense to Frobig.

“Wait, you’re going to pay me $75 a day to hold this person so they work off the $20?” Frobig said. “It’s silly for me to keep them in jail. Whatever the barriers to helping people find jobs, or perform community service, those obstacles should be overcome. This unit is going to be tasked with trying to come up with ideas. I’m not going to spoon feed them. If we show we’re not willing to try these things, then people will spoon feed us, or force feed us.”

No matter the reason, intentional or not, the costs of taking care of inmates are a heavy burden on the taxpayer.

“On the one hand you think about, ‘Shouldn’t we be letting people out so that they can continue to keep their job and maintain their family contacts?’” Burdick said. “And I would agree that’s an important criterium. On the other hand, ‘Are they going to return to future proceedings, are they representing safety concerns to the public?’ These are balancing issues.”

The jail churn
The purpose of bail is to ensure a defendant will appear for his or her day in court. A closer look shows that the money bail system is set up to fail. Too many people in America today cannot make their bail bonds, perpetuating an endless cycle of poverty.

America, the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, can also claim the statistic that one in five people are detained for drug offenses, according to statistics released by the Prison Policy Initiative.

If every U.S. state were compared to countries, North Dakota, population 757,952, would rank number 41 in the world with 521 people jailed per 100,000 in 2015, which is eight ranks higher than Russia, population 144 million, and 105 spots worse than China, population 1.3 billion, according to information published by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research.

North Dakota is listed as one of two non-reporting states in 2016 for the National Prisoner Statistics program managed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.  The numbers provided do reflect that the state’s jailed decreased slightly, but nationally, the numbers of those who found themselves behind bars increased by three percent, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Taking the top spots for incarceration per 100,000 people across the world are: District of Columbia, with 1,196 people incarcerated, Louisiana, with 1,143, and the state of Georgia with 1,004.

The state’s southern neighbor, South Dakota, ranked number six across the world in 2016, with 904 people jailed per 100,000.

Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, said the current bail system is inefficient, and taxpayer money is being spent in inefficient ways.

“Cash bail has little to do with showing up for court, it has to do with how much money you have,” Wagner said.  “And it can change the future of their lives. Some people plead guilty because they can’t make bail. The numbers that you are seeing because they can’t make low bail, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those are people being detained today because they don’t have a couple hundred bucks.”

The damage done not only to taxpayers, or to an arrestee’s pocketbook, is nearly impossible to come back from, Wagner said.

“When you unnecessarily detain people you unnecessarily make them lose their lives, lose their jobs, lose their apartment. You make them these ‘things’ in their kids’ lives. This is pretty darn disruptive to their success. People are pretty resilient; the bad news is that there are a whole lot of things our society does to people with criminal records to make them not succeed.

“Don’t kick them when they’re down if you want them to stand up.”

The main reason why unnecessary detention is on the rise is because “it’s easy,” Wagner said. “It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theory. I got a bug bite, so I scratch it.”

There are three types of bonds in North Dakota: a cash bond, which facilitates a fairly quick release from jail, a surety bond, where a bail bondsman or qualified individual pays 10 percent and guarantees the remaining bail money, or a property bond.

When someone accused of a crime places bail, a magistrate or judge also has the right to tack on stipulations, such as maintaining employment, beginning an educational program, imposing travel restrictions or curfews, requiring the person not to contact an alleged victim and refraining from possessing a firearm, according to the North Dakota Century Code. Sometimes, a judge may also require a person to refrain from alcohol or drugs, or undergo medical treatment in conjunction with a bond.

Every year, more than 11 million people are processed through the jail churn in the United States, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported nearly 11 million arrested in 2015, that’s 3,363 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants. Approximately 1.6 million of those arrested were incarcerated in 2016, according to the Department of Justice Statistics.

During the last 17 years, 99 percent of total jail growth came from incarcerating people who are legally innocent, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics series Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear and Correctional Population in the United States.

A 2016 article published by Prison Policy Initiative, reported in addition to the 1.6 million people incarcerated in federal and state prisons, 646,000 people are behind bars in 3,283 jails across the United States. Of that number, 70 percent are being held pretrial, or on bond.

“While the jail population in the U.S. has grown substantially since the 1980s, the number of convicted people in jails has been flat for the last 15 years,” the article stated. “Detention of the legally innocent has been consistently driving jail growth, and the criminal justice reform discussion must included a discussion of local jails and the need for pretrial detention reform.”

Researchers discovered that those who are unable to meet bail fall into society’s poorest category, and recent trends show that nearly 44 percent of American adults could not afford bail under $1,000, according to the Federal Reserve System’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2016.

An emergency expense costing $400 would even be too much, the report stated. Most of the people questioned said they would have to sell something or borrow money to pay the debt. Nearly 25 percent of all adults in the U.S. also cannot afford to pay current month’s bills in full, and 24 million Americans are carrying debt from medical expenses.

Nearly 65 percent of incarcerated black men making $11,275 per year, 37 percent of Hispanic men making $17,449 a year, and 58 percent of white men making $18,283 per year, are unable to post bond, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

The jail churn draws in black and Latino Americans. Despite the fact that 64 percent of America is populated by white people, and 13 percent by blacks, 40 percent of the total jail population is white, while 39 percent of the population is black, according to 2010 statistics. Native Americans represent 0.9 percent of the national population, and one percent of the total prison population, while Latinos represent 16 percent of America, and 19 percent of the prison population.

“Although, on paper, it is illegal to detain people for their poverty, such detention is the reality in too many of our local jails,” the Prison Policy Initiative reported.

“To truly make our local communities safer and ensure that bail decisions are based on more than how much money one has, states, local governments, and sheriffs should: eliminate the use of money bail, stop locking people up for failure to pay fines and fees, reduce the number of arrests that lead to jail bookings through increased use of citations and diversion programs, increase funding of indigent criminal defense, eliminate all pay-to-stay programs, reduce the high costs of phone calls home from prisons and jails and stop replacing in-person jail visits with expensive video visitation.”

Captain Andrew Frobig looks forward to the day when jail staff can help people get on the road to drug treatment.

“I do believe that we are holding people in jail longer than intended when bail is set ‘low,’” Frobig said. “I think there is a disconnect in that judges set bail low with the expectation that people will be able to get out, but for various reasons they do not. There has been, to this point, a lack of viable alternatives and I am eager to explore new options.”

The nefarious side of the drug trade is always going to be one step ahead of law enforcement, Frobig said, which makes many low-bail inmates a community issue, not a law enforcement problem.

“If someday, and this is never going to happen, but if someday the jail is not necessary, that would be an ideal to reach toward,” Frobig said. “Realistically, we’re always going to have some sort of criminal element out there.”

[Editors note: since writing this story, Andrew Gregerson was released and sentenced to 30 months probation.]

 

Infiltrated: No-DAPL activist hoodwinked by paid FBI informant, defense says

A web of informants, lies, and seduction led to Red Fawn Fallis’s arrest; defense files motions to compel discovery while motions for continuance denied in federal court

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Events leading up to the arrest of one of the Dakota Access Pipeline’s most prominent defendants played out like a game of bughouse chess. Little did an isolated pawn, Red Fawn Fallis, know of an apparent trap set for her near Standing Rock on October 27, 2016, the day police took over the northern 1851 Treaty Camp, according to her defense attorneys.

Red Fawn Fallis – online sources

The state’s side, heavily armed, bolstered by a governor’s emergency declaration and taxpayers dollars, were short on time; the pipeline had a schedule to keep. Law enforcement targeted potential leaders of the pipeline resistance. Early morning meetings began every Tuesday “so that battle rhythm should be protected with our state team,” according to emails from the Office of the Governor of North Dakota Communications Director Mike Nowatzki.

Battle rhythm is a military term, meant to describe the maintenance of synchronized activity and process among distributed “warfighters,” according to the Defense Technical Information Center.

Before Energy Transfer Partners hired the international private security firm TigerSwan, local law enforcement repeatedly retreated from the front lines. Pressure from politicians financially supported by big oil lobbyists mounted, and the state requested federal help.

After TigerSwan’s arrival, however, the tempo shifted, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent one known infiltrator into the camps.

Heath Harmon – Facebook post

The infiltrator, Heath Harmon, a 46-year-old Fort Berthold Reservation member, befriended and seduced Fallis, according to a December 29, 2017 Motion to Compel Discovery filed by defense attorneys. The relationship continued for an unspecified time after Fallis was arrested for allegedly shooting a handgun – a weapon that did not belong to her, but to the infiltrator, who will be paid $40 per day to testify against his former lover on and after January 29, when Fallis’s case goes to trial at Fargo’s Quentin N. Burdick U.S. Courthouse.

Fallis was considered a potential leader by law enforcement in the resistance camps against the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to the defense’s Motion to Compel Discovery, and her identity was placed into a “link chart” prepared by the North Dakota and Local Intelligence Center.

Out of the hundreds that begrudgingly gave way before the law enforcement blitz on the northern Treaty Camp, she was targeted and tackled by a deputy named Thadius Schmit. Two shots rang out, according to affidavits; other video reports state three. One bullet struck the ground near an officer’s knee, and the authorities say a handgun was pried from her hand.

Checkmate, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of North Dakota is preparing to argue.

Not so fast, Fallis’ defense attorneys say. The 37-year-old Oglala Sioux woman was caught up in a scheme to take her off the playing field, and the prosecution is attempting to prove she was someone who could cause serious disadvantages to DAPL’s agenda.

She was arrested with the informant’s loaded handgun. Fallis’s defense team has asked the federal government for all information related to the informant for nearly a year, but the federal government dallied, waiting months before handing some information over, according to the defense.

Police drone footage still shot of the moment Red Fawn Fallis was tackled – The Intercept files

Due to the lateness of incoming information, Fallis’ defense team also asked four times for a continuance, but was denied.

In the United State’s Response to Defendant’s Motion to Compel Discovery, filed on December 20, 2017, prosecutors believe they have given over enough information, and they were not compelled to turn over surveillance gathered by TigerSwan or other private security firms because “Private security contractors have not participated in the criminal investigation of this matter.”

Defense attorneys fired back with a Defendant’s Reply to Government’s Response to Motion to Compel Discovery.

“The FBI recruited, supervised, and paid a specific informant to infiltrate the camps of protesters near Standing Rock,” the motion, which was compiled by Fallis’s attorneys, Bruce Ellison, Jessie A. Cook, and Molly Armour, stated. “During his employment by the FBI, this particular informant seduced Ms. Fallis and initiated an intimate, albeit duplicitous relationship with her. He spent the majority of the 48-hour period prior to Ms. Fallis’s arrest with her and had access to her and her belongings… He used their romantic relationship to rely upon her as an unwitting source of information for informant activities.”

Harmon regularly reported to the FBI, according to unclassified FBI documents revealed by the defense.

“He was instructed to collect information on potential violence, weapons, and criminal activity. This informant’s work was considered so valuable that his FBI handlers recommended additional compensation for him to be ‘motivated for future tasking.’”

Harmon was ordered to spy on specific people in the camps, but never uncovered plans for violence, including firearms, explosives, or fireworks, and insisted that activists involved in the resistance were nonviolent, according to a defense’s motion.

Harmon, however, may not have been the only infiltrator; he’s simply the only person known by name, so far. Others were embedded in the camps, according to the testimony. Informants gave briefings to law enforcement about what they had witnessed.

Bird’s eye view of Backwater Bridge – photograph by C.S. Hagen

A November 5, 2016 TigerSwan situational report also stated in an executive summary that documents obtained at a resistance camp showed activists were evolving, getting training from within and outside North Dakota, and that Earth First magazines had been discovered, which TigerSwan stated promoted violent activities.

The situational report added that documents obtained at a resistance camp showed activists were evolving, getting training from within and outside North Dakota, and that Earth First magazines had been discovered, which TigerSwan stated promoted violent activities.

From the onset, one of TigerSwan’s goals was to create dissension within the camps, according to emails and information obtained by The Intercept. TigerSwan analysts described a sense of urgency in attempting to obtain information, which was at best difficult, according to a September 22, 2016 informational report from TigerSwan.

“DAPL security workers were present amongst protesters, participated in arrests, and in at least one case, possessed liquid accelerant and a firearm while dressed as a protester,” according to a defense motion. “The identity and reports of other undercover security operatives, possibly including the informant boyfriend, have not been disclosed.”

The defense attorneys maintain that Harmon continued his relationship with Fallis until shortly after her arrest.

“He was present and witnessed her seizure. The ammunition and the firearm she is accused of possessing and discharging following that seizure are the property of the same informant who, admittedly, made a series of false statements regarding his knowledge and involvement in the incident to various law enforcement agencies.”

An activist dowsed with Milk of Magnesia to ward off effects of pepper spray – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“Fishing expedition”
TigerSwan operatives may not be participating in criminal investigations today, but they did work closely and help organize law enforcement responses, according to Cass County Sheriff’s Department information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The private security firm was also paid to gather information for what would become a “sprawling conspiracy lawsuit accusing environmentalist groups of inciting the anti-pipeline protests in an effort to increase donations,” according to leaked documents and FOIA information obtained by The Intercept.

“Law enforcement agencies certainly communicated with private security agencies during the DAPL protests,” the federal government replied. “However, much of the defendant’s overbroad discovery requests are fishing expeditions.”

The defense argues that videos and documents they have received from the prosecution, namely United States Attorney Christopher C. Myers and Assistant United States Attorney David D. Hagler, are vastly incomplete, and that some videos from body cams and GoPros have had sections deleted or have been tampered with.

Hundreds of videos exist from the months-long controversy, but only one – taken from a distant drone – was taken during Fallis’s arrest, according to prosecutors.

“Due to the high volume of videos on October 27, 2016, law enforcement officials did not create a record of which officer created the particular videos,” the federal government said in their response. “Also, most of the videos do not contain a timestamp reflecting the time they were recorded.

“After, an exhaustive review of all the videos, no law enforcement videos (other than the drone video offered by the United States) has been located that depict the defendant’s conduct preceding the shooting incident.”

Law enforcement began setting up the barricade at Backwater Bridge the day after the Treaty Camp eviction – photograph by C.S. Hagen

The defense responded with another motion nine days later, arguing that all pertinent information from all the agencies, public and private, involved in intelligence gathering should be handed over, as per U.S. Supreme Court precedent under the Brady motion.

A Brady motion is a defendant’s request for evidence concerning a material witness, which is favorable to the defense and to which the defense may be entitled, according to US Legal Definitions. Favorable evidence includes not only evidence that tends to exculpate the accused, but also evidence that may impeach the credibility of a government witness.

“The government acknowledges communication between law enforcement and private security entities, but asserts that DAPL security contractors are not part of the prosecution team, and that the prosecution does not possess records of any private security contractors.

One of the burned out DAPL trucks – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Assuming DAPL security contractors are not members of the prosecution team, the government ignores that many of the requests for DAPL security-related information are in the possession of cooperating law enforcement agents.”

As at the Wounded Knee trials in the 1970s, the federal government has also failed to prove that officers involved were “lawfully engaged in the lawful performance” of their duties, the defense argued.

“Prosecutors have a general duty to learn and disclose evidence known by investigating police officers,” the defense’s motion stated. “The defendant is entitled to argue to the jury that law enforcement’s relationship to illegally operating DAPL security entities rendered their October 27, 2016 operation unlawful, or at the very least, not lawful beyond a reasonable doubt.”

In an October 17, 2016 corporate-sensitive DAPL security report, which includes TigerSwan, the Russell Group of Texas, SRC, Leighton Security Services, and 10Code LLC, all videographers and photographers were to provide “immediate playback to further the LEO [law enforcement officers] investigation.”

“The purpose is to collect evidentiary photographic and video evidence,” the report stated. “Purpose: collect information that is relative and timely to tactical situation on the ground and supports the pipeline effort and supports law enforcement efforts for prosecution of violations of right-of-way and equipment sanctity, as well as any assaults on pipeline personnel.”

As early as September 7, 2016, days after TigerSwan had arrived, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier and Bureau of Criminal Investigation officials received requests from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board (NDPISB) to “investigate possible criminal activity in the form of unlicensed individuals providing security services at the Dakota Access construction site,” the defense argued.

Police gather for a photo opportunity before a roadblock setup by activists reports differ on who set the debris on fire – photo provided by online sources

In June of last year, the NDPISB sued TigerSwan as the “fusion leader” of private security organizations also named in the civil suit; and the company’s founder, James Reese, for operating illegally in North Dakota.

“The board is in the process of a civil action against TigerSwan, and that I believe is out for service. The board does have civil authority to initiate either administrative actions or civil actions under the Century Code,” Monte Rogneby, attorney for Vogel Law Firm and the NDPISB, said in June. The civil suit is still pending.

TigerSwan was hired by Energy Transfer Partners because the “Dakota Access Pipeline has been halted as a result of active protests against construction of the pipeline,” the NDPISB civil suit against TigerSwan and others stated. “On information and belief, these protests resulted in the hiring of TigerSwan.”

But instead of policing the “criminal operation of TigerSwan and other unlicensed private security entities, law enforcement and the U.S. Attorney’s Office collaborated with TigerSwan,” Fallis’s defense attorneys stated.

Among other investigative and intelligence gathering tactics, “TigerSwan placed or attempted to place undercover private security agents within the protest group to carry out investigative and surveillance activities against these groups on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners and others,” the NDPISB civil suit stated.

In addition, TigerSwan hired Stutsman County Sheriff Chad Kaiser as the DAPL operations local deputy unified commander, according to defense motions.

National security Intelligence Specialist Terry W. Van Horn of the U.S. Attorney’s Office used DAPL security footage to identify people for arrests later, according to the defense’s motion.

“For DAPL criminal investigations, Mr. Van Horn is involved in precisely the type of ‘joint investigation’ and ‘sharing] [of] labor and resources,” the defense argued. “Mr. Van Horn at times directed DAPL-related intelligence gathering by state officials; was a part of a sustained joint investigative effort involving numerous local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; and had ready access to law enforcement-generated materials as well as real-time evidence generated by private security entities.”

DAPL security’s relationship to law enforcement embodies joint activity, the defense argued.

“DAPL security agents assisted with arrests, provided contemporaneous information in the form of live feeds and other intelligence gathered to ‘aid in prosecution,’ received information in return, procured military-grade equipment for October 27, and even employed a sheriff prominent in law enforcement’s DAPL-related command structure…”

When TigerSwan began operations in North Dakota, it first denied its role as a fusion leader on or before September 23, 2016. Later, multiple requests for cooperation and information were mostly ignored, according to the NDPISB civil suit. More than two months after TigerSwan’s arrival, it submitted an application for working in North Dakota, but the application was denied because if failed to provide positive criminal history for its founder, Reese.

In January 2017, TigerSwan’s application was rejected again, but the security firm never stopped working in North Dakota, the NDPISB reported.

“Morton County, BCI, and other law enforcement agencies ignored an explicit request made by the NDPISB to ensure private security operators were operating legally and instead initiated a sustained relationship of collaboration with these illegally-operating security companies,” Fallis’s defense attorneys stated in the Motion to Compel Discovery.  

Under North Dakota law, officers who collaborated with TigerSwan may be accomplices to the misdemeanor violation of unlicensed operation, the defense stated.

Red Fawn Fallis (in back) and her mother (center front) – Facebook

Red Fawn’s arrest
Fallis was assumed guilty by many before the ink dried on her arrest report. She spent a year in jail without bond. Morton County Sheriff’s Department press releases were sent far and wide, with more than 140 reportedly arrested on October 27, 2016. Many pipeline supporters pointed to the incident to ridicule the entire resistance movement outside of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which at one time became the tenth largest community in the state.

An October 28, 2016 affidavit conducted by Special Agent Joseph Arenz of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation stated that Pennington County deputies Thaddeus Schmit and Rusty Schmidt were moving activists, known as water protectors, south along Highway 1806, when they identified Fallis as an instigator.

Free Red Fawn banner outside of main entryway to Oceti Sakowin – photograph by C.S. Hagen

“On October 27, 2016 deputies with the Pennington County, South Dakota Sheriff’s Department were in Morton County, North Dakota assisting with law enforcement functions for the Dakota Access Pipeline protest,” the affidavit stated. “An operational plan had been made which was going to consist of law enforcement removing individuals who had set up a camp on private land owned by DAPL, on the east side of Highway 1806 where the pipeline was supposed to be laid.”

When Fallis walked away from the crowd that day, Schmit and Schmidt “took her to the ground” and attempted to flex handcuff her. Lying face down, two heavily armed deputies manhandling her, Schmit heard two quick gunshots,  and Schmidt noticed the ground near his knee “explode,” the affidavit stated.

Schmit then lunged towards Fallis’ left hand and with the help of other officers, pulled the handgun away before handcuffing her.

Standing at five feet three inches tall, and weighing approximately 125 pounds, Fallis would have been an easy tackle for two well-trained sheriff deputies.

Neither deputy saw a gun when they took Fallis to the ground, and believe she was able to retrieve the weapon when Schmit stopped pulling on her left arm, the affidavit stated.

“Once Red Fawn Fallis was in custody, officers found a small amount of what they believed to be marijuana in Red Fawn Fallis’ left and right pants pockets and also metal knuckles in the backpack that Red Fawn Fallis was carrying,” the affidavit stated.

While being transported to the Morton County Detention Center, police said Fallis told them she was trying to pull the gun out of her pocket and was jumped, making the gun go off.

“Red Fawn Fallis also made the statement to Probation and Parole that they are lucky she didn’t shoot ‘all of you f*ckers,’” according to the affidavit.

A Facebook page supporting Fallis called Free Red Fawn stated that Fallis was retreating from the front lines when she was tackled.

“Police reports allege that one of the officers pulled his weapon and placed it against her back,” the post stated. “While she was pinned to the ground, shots were fired. She is accused of firing a weapon. Eyewitness accounts and video show otherwise.”

Originally, Fallis was charged with attempted murder, preventing arrest, carrying a concealed firearm, and possession of marijuana. The charges were dropped by the state a month later, but were moved to federal court. On January 29, Fallis will begin court proceedings charged with engaging in civil disorder, discharging a firearm in relation to a felony crime of violence, possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon, which if found guilty carries a minimum sentence of 10 years and the potential of life imprisonment.

Law enforcement against activists in water – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Red Fawn
Today, Fallis resides in a halfway house in Fargo. She has access to a mobile phone and can chat online, but heeding caution from her lawyers, refused interview requests.

Fallis, and her supporters, say she is a political prisoner of a war that has lasted more than 500 years.

“The U.S. government is engaged in tactics of lies, and rumor, and paid informants in an attempt to put our sister, daughter, auntie, water protector, and friend in prison,” a post from the Free Red Fawn Facebook page stated.

“But she can’t wait to get her story out,” Cempoali Twenny, an activist who stayed at the Standing Rock camps and is Fallis’ friend said. “They’ve already convicted her, and painted her as someone who is violent. She is a good-hearted person, she’s been in this whole thing for a year now, and she’s been having a hard time, but she’s operating from the truth, and she has nothing to hide.”

While at the camps, Fallis worked primarily as a medic, pulling injured people from the front lines, dowsing faces burning from pepper spray with milk of magnesia, and easing the pain of those hit with rubber bullets.

“People are holding her up as a hero, because she is one of the water protectors that has been targeted, and they’re using her as an excuse to prove to themselves, to make sure something goes through. We don’t want that to happen to her.”

Fallis also worked with youth, as an older sister, Twenny said.

“There were no leaders there, there were never any leaders there,” Twenny said. “Our leader was the water, and the fire that kept us in peace and in harmony.”

Red Fawn Fallis with her mother Troylynn YellowWood – Facebook

Fallis is the daughter of Troylynn YellowWood, an activist who helped block the Columbus Day Parade in Denver, Colorado in 2004, according to the American Indian Genocide Museum. YellowWood was also a member of the American Indian Movement, and in the 1970s gave safe house to Annie Mae Aquash in her Denver home, according to February 2004 testimony in the trial of Arlo Looking Cloud.

YellowWood passed away in June 2016, four months before her daughter was arrested.  

Fallis has a prior record from 14 years ago, and served 30 months of probation in Denver after pleading guilty. She is the only woman and one of six Native Americans facing charges in federal court from the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, according to the Water Protector Legal Collective. Federal charges against five men stemmed from information obtained by Energy Transfer Partners’ security teams, according to an affidavit filed by ATF Special Agent Derek Hill.

Michael Giron, known as Little Feather, is from the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and was raised in Santa Barbara, California. He has been incarcerated without bond since March 9, 2017 on two federal charges of civil disorder and using fire to commit a federal felony offense arising from October 27, 2016. His trial is set for April 10, 2018, in Bismarck. Little Feather faces up to 15 years in prison if proven guilty.

Dion Ortiz, 21, was being held at the Sandoval County Detention Center in New Mexico on federal charges of civil disorder and the use of fire to commit a federal crime. His request to be released to a halfway house was granted on December 7, 2017.

Brennon J. Nastacio, 36, commonly known as “Bravo One,” is a Pueblo Native American, and was indicted on February 8, 2017 for civil disorder and the use of fire to commit a federal crime on October 27, 2016. Nastacio was also charged by the state with felony terrorism after he helped disarm Kyle Thompson, a former employee of Leighton Security Services under the TigerSwan fusion lead. The state’s charges were dropped in July 2017.

Michael “Rattler” Markus, from Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, is on supervised release after being held for nearly two months at the Heart of America Correction Center in Rugby, North Dakota.

James “Angry Bird” White, 52, a veteran and from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, worked security in the Standing Rock camps. He too faces federal charges and was arrested in January 2017.

On December 4, 2017, Fallis made a public statement on the Red Fawn Facebook page.

“I remember the last time I had the opportunity to go with my Ina (mom) to express our support and solidarity for our Cheyenne relatives whose families were murdered in the Sand Creek Massacre,” Fallis wrote. “We went to the Capitol in downtown Denver and on our way there she reminded me that no matter what we are doing in our own lives, we must always take time and make an effort to go to gatherings like this to show support because no matter how much time has passed, the importance of honoring and remembrance is crucial to the healing process and as Lakota people we must always remember our relatives.”

Her mother was an influence in her life, she stated.

“We all share the same history in one way or another so we must open our hearts in order to love and encourage each other and continue to help each other heal. I added a picture of us at the Capitol that day and even though my Ina was very ill and battling cancer she was there, smiling and offering her heart and love to our relatives who were there to honor the memory of so many who died at the hands of hate, racism, greed, and the American government.

“I am grateful for the lessons and teachings she handed down to myself and so many others because at camp I was able to go to the youth and build a great bond with them as I admired the work they started in a prayerful way to Protect Mni Sosa from the Dakota Access Pipeline and the big oil companies. I love them and my heart feels good when I remember the times we spent and the talks we had. I also remember the strength in their hearts and their prayers and the fire in their eyes, I am thankful for each and every one of them.”

A lone activist starts the day with singing as a building burns (upper right) on the day of eviction from Oceti Sakowin – photograph by C.S. Hagen

 

In the mind of Brooke Lynn Crews

A look into the life and secret thoughts of the main suspect

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – While the debate in court may turn to the sanity of Brooke Lynn Crews, a rare glimpse into her personal history suggests she was precise, methodical, and studying for a doctorate in psychology.

Crews, maiden name Doolin, was arrested in August and charged with conspiracy to murder Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, then kidnap her unborn baby.

Her live-in boyfriend, William Henry Hoehn, 32, faces identical charges, and has pleaded not guilty. His trial is set to begin early March. They lived in what is now a fairly clean apartment on 9th Street North in Fargo. For a few days, a dumpster one block away held what remained of their lives.

Crews isn’t troubled any more than the average divorcee; she was meticulous with her records and personal information, religiously kept a journal. She thought herself something of an Amazonian, but had a string of lovers. Every relationship noted in her calendars and journals started off with smiley-faced notes along the edges, but within weeks, soured.  

Beneath a cat-clawed recliner, stained mattresses, the broken front door, kitchen utensils, receipts, and identification cards, a five feet four inch stack of hard cover psychology books, ranging from clinical, criminal, forensic, and legal psychology to midwifery, was discovered.

In one of her final journal entries in a notebook entitled “Just Some Thoughts,” Crews penned a list: “homebirth,” including a “childbirth kit,” an “emergency plan,” and “emergency supplies, including CPR bag for infants or neonates medication for excess bleeding.”

The “midwife”
Crews was no midwife but she kept a list of all the items she would need: gloves, stethoscope, scissors, two blades, eight clamps, IV port, saline solution, Pitocin – brand name for Oxytocin, a hormone that can cause or strengthen labor contractions during labor, and can induce abortion.

One of Brooke Lynn Crews’ journals

She also listed 16 washcloths, eight large towels, heating pads, electric suction, oxygen tanks, nitros, or a laughing gas, and that she could do it all in 12 hours. She needed a calm environment with dim lighting, natural sounds, hushed tones, while checking vitals every 15 minutes and careful of heart rate during surgery.

Aside from the actual procedure, she planned to set aside a basket, four towels, eight washcloths, a cap and gown, care box, and a nutrition kit. She took notes on abdominal pregnancy, writing that she needed to look for health and age, and “location of attachment.” “If all seems well greater than 33 weeks, take conservative approach, if nothing is well, deliver immediately. If pregnancy failing, hold off until at least 30 weeks, but anything less than 28 weeks needs full efforts to live.”

She was looking into a “new hobby,” or in vitro fertilization, trying to plan birthdates, according to a short stack of notes stuffed inside one simple binder. She preferred birthdays in April and May, October and November. She researched drugs used before and after implantation, and the machinery that was needed.

“Egg/sperm, independent living cells?” Crews wrote. “So, provided they maintain proper conditions, they live?” Later on the same page she wrote “Black market IVF? Hahahaha,” and then a smiley face.

Fetal abductions
Many documented cases involving fetal or Caesarean abductions since 1974 have ended with the killer, usually a female, guilty, but declared legally insane. Since 1965, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has documented 323 cases of infant abduction, with only 17 fetal abductions worldwide.

Official numbers vary by definition or location, sometimes rising to as many as 26 by 2015, but if the state declares the case to be a fetal abduction, Savanna Greywind’s murder will be the 18th documented incident in what authorities describe as a rising crime trend.

Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind – Facebook

At 22 years old, Greywind, a member of the Spirit Lake Tribe, was eight months pregnant when she was killed, and her baby, Haisley Jo, survived. Police discovered the baby and the accused killer in Crews’ apartment five days after Greywind went missing on August 19. Kayakers on the Red River discovered Greywind’s body, wrapped in plastic, nine days later.

Most infant abductions occur near the home, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Police say Greywind was lured 24 steps up to Crews’ apartment for a sewing project. The majority of abductors impersonate health care workers; Crews was licensed in First Aid procedures, and had formerly worked at nursing centers.

Only two cases of fetal abduction involved men, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“The abductor befriends the pregnant victim, all the while planning to kill her and extract the baby,” Dr. Marlene Dalley of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police said in an article she wrote. “Unlike infant abductions, the fetus abductor is so determined to impersonate a woman who has given birth, that she may even take the child to a hospital, after cutting herself internally to make it look as if she has given birth to a child, first through use of weight gain, then the use of prosthesis to fake a pregnant womb.”

“These abductors carried out such crimes because they felt a desire to form or strengthen a partner relationship and to live out a fantasy of their own of delivering a child.”

Crews repeatedly attempted to set up communication systems with the men she dated, but according to journal records, failed as many times as she started. “Things I’ve ‘Tried’ (to make relationship better)” started off with a backrub night every week, improving and adjusting her attitude, not speaking when upset, begging for truce, and ending relationships.

Concerned citizens in front of Cass County Courthouse demanding justice for Savanna Greywind – photo by C.S. Hagen

Run, Crews, run
Natural mother of at least three children, Crews, now 38, grew up in Florida, where according to Christmas cards, her mother, Paula Nelson, still lives. Crews, under her maiden name Doolin, had a troubled childhood she tried hard to forget in her journal entries. At 23, she was jailed and put on probation in Missouri for passing bad checks, according to the State of Missouri Department of Corrections, and was jailed again in Hidalgo County, Texas on August 31, 2002, for a parole violation.

Brooke Lynn Crews, while still with maiden name Doolin

From 2000 until 2003, she was a waitress at the Chinese Dragon, and was a sales representative and animal technician for Petland Pet Store in Bradenton, Florida. She listed herself as a high school graduate of Dixie Hollins High School.

Crews owed child support to Aaron Bradford Edwards of Otter Tail County, Minnesota, in the amount of $13,599.72 as of June 19, 2014, according to the State of North Dakota Unified Judicial System. On March 24, 2012, she was ordered by the state to pay $317 every month, and by June 2014, Crews had failed to pay. Crews and Edwards had a child born in Pinellas County, Florida, in 1995.

She married Carl Crews in 2006, gave birth to two children, and was an administrative assistant for her former husband with Carl Crews’ Carpentry. The marriage lasted three years, but she returned to her ex-husband’s house to continue her education and because “he was unable to pay both his child support and mortgage,” Crews wrote. Their marriage was dissolved on June 8, 2009, and the father became the custodian of the children, according to court documents.

Although the relationship was strained, Crews had no further incidents with the law until January 2012, when she attacked her former husband with a knife, according to court documents.

Written inside a 2012 calendar on January 21, Crews wrote: “got arrested.”

“I am seeking emergency relief for my children because they are at risk of significant emotional and mental harm,” Carl Crews wrote in the affidavit for a custody battle. “It is important to understand, the Respondent’s [Crews] decision to leave the children in my care and run from her problems is a reoccurring issue. She previously abandoned the children in my care in 2009 when she left for California. When she left at that time, it was complete surprise. She also left the children in my care in 2011 when she left for Australia for 30 days. On February 1, 2012, she abandoned the children, and [a] third time when she left for Australia a second time.”

Crews had multiple partners, while Carl had none, he said in the affidavit, to which Crews made no reply in her notes along the paperwork edges.

“Carl seems to agree with my decisions regarding kids and doesn’t find me lacking; yet whenever it’s a choice he doesn’t like, then all of a sudden I’m a knife-wielding child abandoner with a penchant for promiscuity,” Crews wrote. “This apparent contradiction has caused me a great deal of emotional trauma over the years.”

In a different journal, Crews denied she ever attacked her former husband before fleeing to Australia to marry Andrew Murray, a chef in Katoomba, New South Wales. She made her decision to leave her home two days before Christmas 2011, 35 days before the altercation took place, and wrote: “my vote is Drew, but this is a double-edged sword. I can better provide for the family stateside. At the same time, neither of us wants to be in the U.S.”

She also denied brandishing a knife.

“Children did not witness me attack their father with a knife because an attack never occurred,” Crews wrote. Crews had two children with Carl, who was also the father of one other child.

After signing a promise to appear in court for a pending criminal case, Crews fled to Australia, according to court documents.

In the back of a calendar she kept while in Australia, she wrote: “I love Andrew,” with an exclamation point and a heart, and mentioned on May 24, 2012 that they were planning a honeymoon trip to Fiji.

The Australian marriage lasted six days, according to separation paperwork. She was denied a work visa, and returned to the USA in the fall of 2012. On September 22, 2012, she made a journal entry saying that she had changed for the better.

A page in Brooke Lynn Crews’ journal

“I never finish anything that I start (one of many flaws). The time is fast approaching for me to take leave of Oz and head back to the States for a bit. I think back to the time I’ve spent here and I’m amazed at how different I am now compared to when I first arrived… I realize how hard my life is about to become, and surprisingly, I’m ready to face it all. Yeah, I’m scared, but not scared enough to run. Sometimes, I find myself judging me by someone else’s scales, and I can’t do that anymore.”

On December 23, 2014, Crews was diagnosed with anxiety reaction at Essentia’s 32nd Avenue Hospital Emergency Department, according to hospital records. She said she had PTSD.

A lengthy custody battle over her two children and her former husband’s child ensued after her return from Australia. Nathaniel Welte of Welte Law, PLLC, the Detroit Lakes, Minnesota law firm who defended Carl Crews in the custody proceedings, said he couldn’t comment on any aspect of the lawsuit or what he knew about Crews.

Crews defended herself in court.

A few days before Thanksgiving 2012, Crews arranged to have her children visit her in Fargo, but according to court documents tricked her former husband and refused to let them go, enrolling her eldest at Ben Franklin Middle School in North Fargo.

“I attempted to obtain the return of my children without court involvement, but all of my attempts have been unsuccessful,” Carl said in an affidavit.

Crews refuted her former husband’s claim saying that she told him to come pick the children up, as she was having transportation issues. “He angrily refused so when I said they might as well stay the week (holiday). He then said he was on his way at which point I let him know his kids were ready for bed and if he showed up at my door he better have a court order and a policeman.”

Later, in her journal, Crews expressed her relief of having the children with her.

“Kids have stayed… Since I made a ‘sound’ decision prior to now, it can be reasonably assumed that my decision this time is ‘sound’ as well as based on rational logic and consideration of all factors involved… At any rate, the babes are in, clean and sleeping well this morning. I am happy.”

Her happiness didn’t last long; she fled to Australia.

“I’m not sure how much damage my children can take, all in a malicious bid for control,” Crews wrote on March 24, 2015. “I’m not sure what’s been more difficult; having to go through this trauma again or finally admitting to myself how afraid I am of my ex-husband… He’s lucky that I am who I am. He got away with bullying me for years. Like a fool, I allowed it to happen.”

She began her relationship with William Henry Hoehn soon after leaving Australia. Hoehn was convicted of child neglect and abuse in Grand Forks County the same year he began dating Crews, which became an issue during court proceedings.

Later that same year, Crews planned on declaring her two children as dependents on tax returns, according to documents mailed to her by the North Dakota Department of Human Services. When she applied for SNAP benefits in December 2014, she made $280 a month, and she declared that her children were living with her. She listed herself as unemployed, stayed at the YWCA, had $100 cash in hand. Monthly bills added up to approximately $565 per month.

On December 23, 2014, Judge Waldemar B. Senyk of the Otter Tail County Courthouse, granted temporary sole physical and sole legal custody of the children to their father, Carl.

By 2015, Crews was given visitation rights every other weekend from Friday at 5 p.m. until Sunday at 5 p.m., and one extra week during the summer months. A stack of homemade Christmas and birthday cards made by her children are now trash.

Supporting her children – alone – would have been difficult, as Crews frequently jumped jobs, at one time working at Perham Living, the Frazee Nursing Home, the Dollar Store, St. Mary’s Elder Home, and Prairie St. Johns, according to her resume.

Brooke Lynn Crews, after marrying into the Murray family, in Australia

“Love coins”
Journal entries made mention of at least three lovers since her marriage to Carl ended, and nobody was ever good enough. Every one of her lovers played mind games with her, she said, made her feel like she wasn’t good enough, she wasn’t smart enough.

Crews was born in Sparta, Illinois, daughter to David Lawrence Crews and Paula Marie Green, which is apparently a lie.  Little is known about her childhood, but she mentioned a troubled upbringing in journal entries.

When Hoehn, from Detroit Lakes, and Crews began dating, he was making approximately $2,062 a month, according to Otter Tail Court documents.

Court records show Hoehn had a child in 2003, and was later sued by a Ryananne Hunsberger, a Philadelphia woman, for child support. In 2010, he became a father again with a Grand Forks woman named Angela Nelson. Hoehn kept records of when he fell behind financially, was pursued by debt collectors in 2014, but was making child support payments in 2015. He owed approximately $650 a month in child support, according to income withholding paperwork.

During 2015 and 2014, Hoehn’s paychecks were sent through Aerotek Commercial, a recruitment company, and he was working for Cardinal IG. He was paying child support, approximately $290 to $400 a month.

Hoehn’s relationship with Crews wasn’t bleak; he was a man in love.

“I want to make you feel as loved as you are,” Hoehn wrote in a love letter to Crews. “To be fulfilling your emotional and physical needs. There are a ton of things that I don’t know or don’t know very well. And I do get lazy. That’s not acceptable. I need to be more considerate and thoughtful. I do think the world of you. You’re beautiful and so smart. You make me laugh, not just laugh but smile on the inside.

“And I’ve been letting you down. I don’t want to let you down, I want to lift you up and give you that feeling of fulfillment and happiness. We are very important to me. You are my best friend, my partner, and a lot of time my mentor and example of ‘how to be.’ I want to be the better man, for you, for us, and our family. Not the guy that leaves you to eat more pork today. Not the guy that’s too drunk every night to do anything… You are better than I deserve, and I can’t imagine what I’ve ever done to have you in my life… I will slow down and be more thoughtful. Give you more time. I’m sorry I haven’t. It kills me to imagine our lives without us. I can and will be a better William for my beloved Brooke Lynn.”

William Henry Hoehn mugshot

On January 1, 2015, Crews responded, to herself.

“This man has earned his place in my life,” Crews wrote. “He, like myself, had a truly rough start in life. He made a terrible mistake and nobody is as hard on him as he is on himself. I’ve known Will for a few years and he’s spent that time taking classes, working, and paying his child support (no deadbeat). He has accomplished this as far as I’m concerned. He and I have the kind of relationship that is good for the children to see. We are loving. We don’t scream (only occasionally disagreeing) at one another. We are affectionate and kind.”

As with other men Crews wrote about, her tune soon changed. She appeared restless when not physically running, frequently turning her thoughts toward writing fiction. On one day she would write how much she loved someone in the margins of a calendar, and follow the entry up with a long negative journal entry about the same person weeks later. In a personal statement Crews wrote about her relationship problems with Hoehn.

“I feel like I started this relationship with my purse chock full of love coins and slowly but surely that purse has become empty, and I’ve simply nothing left to give… Our intimacy isn’t so intimate anymore. Maybe once a week he makes time for me during sex. Otherwise, lasts approximately seven to 15 minutes with absolutely zero regard for my pleasure/satisfaction.”

In her lower moments Crews wrote that her boyfriend wanted to appear intelligent but lacked substance. He rarely helped with chores, waited for her to make the Kool-Aid or a pot of coffee then put his cup first in line.

Crews also wrote fondly of a man named Liam, last name denoted by the letter H, but like her other relationships, it also ended when she expressed he was “extremely dishonest, zero boundaries, unreliable, backstabbing, manipulative, irresponsible, emotionally distant, abusive, highly unmotivated.”

A 2015 calendar meticulously filled out by Crews included events such as cancer walks, NDSU lectures, horse shows, her children’s birthdays, due dates for bills, even the exact days her menstrual cycles began. Sticky notes attached seem to include her attempts at self-diagnosing symptoms she was having. She recorded days when her children became angry with their father.

She kept precise journals filled with inner thoughts, class notes, forgotten letters to a boyfriend or her mother. Crews used white-out over incorrectly spelled words. Envelopes were opened carefully, most likely with a letter opener or knife. Plastic cases containing notes, letters, tax returns, were clearly and properly labeled. Notebooks and calendars were earmarked for efficiency.

In June 2015, she received a doctor’s report about a growth in her gallbladder, prompting a meticulous record of events for the following year. She went out less and less, having lost a taste for “lovers of the status quo.”

The Amazonian, the psychiatrist
“Perhaps: there are two distinct ‘personalities’ within each of us (darkness and light),” one of Crews’ journal entries began. “One of them is socially obliterated fairly early or are we born with the one (I believe, we’re predetermined with two distinct thought processes that manifest as personalities).

“Is it normal for humans to have this ‘dark’ side? Seems so.”

Crews studied psychology at Minnesota State University, both at Detroit Lakes and in Moorhead. She reported on her resume that she held a bachelor’s degree in psychology, minored in sociology, and was studying for her doctorate.

While at MSUM, Crews maintained a 3.5 GPA, and had taken 18 hours of credit by October 2014. Crews’ grades were good enough to qualify her for the International Dean’s List Society in 2013, the Spring Semester Dean’s List at MSUM, and the list for a select group of Minnesota State University-Moorhead exchange program in 2015.

In 2013, she was enrolled at Minnesota State University Moorhead, taking classes such as social behavior, physiological psychology, theory of knowledge, abnormal psychology, and directed research, ramping up charges in excess of $4,038.

She received financial aid, $4,500 in November 2014, and declared a proposed $3,500 in January 2015.

Crews had plans to rewrite DSM 5, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”

“Change psychology for forever,” Crews wrote.  “Should eliminate the need for co-morbidity. Also individualizes future treatment. The term mental disorder should firmly mean a marked disorder in all major areas of life. All of these should be addressed individually and on the whole. Too much diagnosing these days. Labeling.”

She was also interested in parapsychology, the psychology of paranormal phenomenon, especially precognition, telepathy, and interacting with dead people.

“Need to work on personal ‘manifesto,’” Crews wrote in the back of one notebook. “What do I believe? Why do I believe it? What needs to change? Everything. Why does it need to change? Cause we’re doomed if we don’t.”

Crews was a constantly quitting smoker, tried to live healthily but had to remind herself through her journals.

“Topics that fascinate me,” Crews wrote. “The stupid choices humanity keeps making, serial killers, the making of a society, religion, aliens, the ‘dark side’ of social movements, zombies, evolution.”

One serial killer she took particular fascination with was Theodore R. Bundy, for the serial killer’s “perfect double life,” she wrote in a research project for a criminology class. She profiled Bundy with narcissistic personality disorder, and stated if someone similar to Bundy approached her for help, she would have assisted.

“When comparing him to other serial killers it [is] his ability to not stand out and to be so charming that sets him apart from the others and highlights some common misconceptions that many people have about these sick individuals,” Crews wrote.

She received full marks on the paper.

She also received 47 marks out of 50 on a research paper on the Dacotah Foundation for an industrial and organizational psychology class. A paper she completed on her own health profile for a health psychology class received high marks.  She considered herself physically and mentally healthy, with a few weaknesses such as lack of exercise, stress management, and too much social drinking.

Crews was also interested in Amazonians, and according to her notes, considered herself similar. Amazonian women bred once a year, killed male children, sometimes held men as slaves.

“Decided to start a section on these mysterious females because I think, for whatever reason, that I’m being pulled or led this way. I’m really after an expose of sorts that delves into the obstacles femininity has faced.”

Crews also listened to radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and took notes during a March 20, 2017 podcast underlining CIA pervasive illegal surveillance, thought Democrats were being hypocritical, and that mainstream media were not trustworthy.

A former reference listed on a work application, who wished to remain anonymous, said Crews was a “nasty woman, who destroyed her family’s lives, including her children.”

No knife attack entry in Brooke Lynn Crews’ journal

The antagonist
“Death snuck in quietly when nobody was watching.” The sentence was penned in cursive, part of a rough draft for a short story.

Crews considered herself a writer, dabbled in fiction, played with working titles such as “The Breakdown Diaries,” “Demon Lands,” and “Mangani.” Her antagonist suffered from a mental disorder, while her 17-year-old protagonist was unique, intelligent, “A young woman living in a dysfunctional family encounters evil and overcomes.”

“The Breakdown Diaries” was to deal with another young woman who records in her journal a zombie-like sickness that spreads throughout the world.

Horror and the supernatural were both themes that she expressed a desire to write about. “I think readers want to experience their darkness, fears, (through literature medium), and so tastes will be as varied as the individuals themselves. For myself, I really [enjoy] reading about horror that carries equal probabilities of happening.”

She also thought about a reworking of George Orwell’s “1984.” She tried making money with technical research papers and dissertations.

Her ex husband, Carl, was not religious, Crews wrote, but she taught her children about all religions, belief systems, and encouraged personal choice while “stressing spirituality’s significance in the human experience.”

None of the paperwork from Crews’ meticulous collections make any note of mental illness, besides anxiety and stress, and her own diagnosis of PTSD. At times, she did take medication, but she aspired to be an author, a psychiatrist, and to work with children and adults with developmental disabilities.

She stretched, meditated regularly on issues such as letting go, being positive, humility, coming to terms with the past, and being afraid, she wrote.

“Stop being victim to circumstance or reacting to the opinions of others,” Crews wrote in a journal. “Learn to become the initiators or the inspirers of worthy endeavors.”

Her morning routine included: make bed, meditate for 30 minutes, stretches for 20 minutes, do hair for day, dress for day, and compose an entry for her health journal.

In her journals, she included the happiness formula: H = S + C + V, with H standing for the enduring level of happiness, S, the set range for happiness, C, the circumstances of life, and V, the factors under voluntary control.

“I’m definitely not interested in taking any other sort of medication…meds are dangerous. At any rate, having this condition does not make me evil…My mistakes are many and I will forever be haunted by regrets, but I’m not a bad person, and I never will be…I’m a good person underneath…Everything is about intention. The reasoning behind an action speaks loudly about someone…I want to do good things with my life and I’m more than willing to fight for that right.”

On Monday, December 11, Crews is expected to change her not guilty plea in Cass County District Court. She faces charges of class A conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to give false information to police. Hoehn faces identical charges, and has pleaded not guilty.

Attempts were made to interview Crews and Hoehn, their lawyers and family members. One man who spent time with Hoehn in Cass County Jail said in October that they became friends, and described in detail Hoehn’s account of what happened, but his information was considered second hand, and could not be verified.

Other items that were left behind in the apartment included cutlery, a flat screen television, toiletries, clothes, furniture, and a police report stating what was taken, including a piece of carpet from a closet.

Wishing for the city to forget the gruesome events that occurred at the apartment complex at 2825 9th Street North, the landlord, Christopher Owens, refused to comment or allow photographs to be taken.

New tenants said they know the apartment’s history but don’t care. They walked into a room filled knee-high with trash and papers. A well-worn couch sat in the middle of the living room, and the restroom was out of sight down a small hallway. A framed painting with the Chinese character for love hung on the east wall.

Piece by piece, the new tenants are emptying the apartment, and preparing to move in.  

Brooke Lynn Crews mugshot

 

‘Onkel’ Stern’s list

How a Valley City German immigrant saved more than 125 German Jews from the Holocaust

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – In 1933, “Onkel” Herman Stern received a coded letter from a relative called “The Chammer.” Postmarked Venlo, Holland, containing one word, typed in capital letters and double-spaced.

U N B E L I E V A B L E

A warning followed: “Before saying one more thing – I must warn you never to refer to it in a letter… Whenever you write just say ‘I’m in receipt of your letter from Holland and glad to learn that everything is okay’”

Herman Stern 1929 – photograph provided by Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library UND

The Chammer spent his savings to travel by train from Nazi Germany to Holland, where outgoing mail was still safe from prying eyes, and described in detail the atrocities he had witnessed in his German hometown. Four Jews shot and killed, no arrests, no police interference. Six Jews in one day committed suicide. Forty-five Jewish bankers arrested. A Jewish friend in Worms was locked in a pigpen. Doctors were quitting. Lawyers no longer had access to their black legal garments.

“The Jehoodems [are] done for in Germany and this is what happens every day,” The Chammer wrote. “Never say anything that you are sorry you heard about the cruel treatments. If you do write this and the letter happened to be censured, they will be SHOT to death, SHOT, SHOT to death.”

The letter was just one, still safely guarded at the UND’s Chester Fritz Library Department of Special Collections, that alerted Stern that the Nazi threat against Jews was more than hate speech.

A radio program on WCCO in 1933 led by Rabbi Albert Yannow also put the situation into focus for Stern. One listener wrote in to the radio station saying: “I am with Hitler for trying to put Germany again in the sun, out of which France, and indirectly the Allies have forced it. The Jewish question, to me, is the outcome of a hysterical condition there. Injustice has ever been the Jew’s lot. That seems to be his fate – to suffer and endure.”

The youngest of eight children born to a poor Jewish family in Aberbrechen, Germany, Stern rekindled contacts involved with immigration and one by one, and began saving his family. Their names are scrawled in a well-worn ledger. 

Herman Stern’s ledger – photograph by C.S. Hagen

In all, Stern saved more than 125 people from near certain death at Nazi hands. Showing foresight, he started early. As president of Straus Clothing Company, he had funds, some land, but more importantly, Stern was respected, and had a friend in the United States Senate in Gerald P. Nye, who quietly helped Stern obtain immigration visas for his German relatives.

During a time when anti immigration laws turned Jews away by the shiploads, Stern also found a friend in former North Dakota Governor John Moses, a Norwegian immigrant who campaigned for office speaking Norwegian, German, and English, and later defeated Nye for his seat in the U.S. Senate.

Fifteen boxes of paperwork at Chester Fritz Library tell the complicated story of how Stern saved his family, many of whom were distantly related. Some were smuggled out of Germany under blankets by the French Resistance, and routed to Cuba, Chile, or Panama to wait for U.S. visas. Another managed to escape to Paris, and then later on to Casablanca.

“He couldn’t save his brothers, and that bothered him for the rest of his life,” Stern’s grandson, Rick Stern, said. “He tried, or they were too late.”

Herman Stern’s grandsons look over a well-worn ledger with a list of those who were saved – photograph by C.S. Hagen

Stern’s story has had little media attention, and virtually none during his lifetime (1887-1980). Recognized for many awards, perhaps the most prestigious for Stern being the posthumous Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award and the Boy Scouts of America’s Silver Buffalo award, little was said about him saving more than 125 Jews from Nazi internment. A monument was also erected for Stern at the Veterans Memorial Park in Valley City in October 2016.

Since the movie “Schindler’s List,” Stern’s story has been gaining attention, including a book written by Moorhead resident Terry Shoptaugh entitled “You Have Been Kind Enough to Assist Me.” Additionally, a documentary on Stern’s life will be released this month by Visual Arts Studios in Fargo entitled “The Mission of Herman Stern.”

While on his deathbed in Fargo, 1980, Rick read the Silver Buffalo award to his grandfather, one of the only early mentions of him being a Holocaust rescuer.

“During World War II you helped more than 100 persons who were in great danger of concentration camps or death in Europe to come to this country,” the biography on the Silver Buffalo award said of Stern.

They were the last words Stern heard, Rick said. His reply, like the way he chose to live, was simple, honest, and humble.

“Well, that’s nice,” Stern said.

“I was there when it was time,” Rick said. “Have you ever been with someone when they passed on? This was so beautiful, so magnificent. We were just talking, he coughed a few times, and then I felt his spirit rise.”

Petitions for help from German Jews 1930s to 1940s – letters provided by Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library UND

Stern remembered
Stern committed one dishonest act to fulfill his dream, Rick said. He ran from a clothier apprenticeship in 1903. In those days, an untrained apprentice’s contract had to be purchased. His family was poor. His father worked in a packaging company and had many mouths to feed, and Stern was a dreamer.

Herman Stern after arrival in North Dakota – photograph provided by family

“All Grandpa could think of was coming to America, that was the land of opportunity,” Rick said. “Grandpa was a little like Jacob, he was sent by the Almighty here so he could rescue his family. And he did.”

Stern never spoke about anti-Semitism in his youth, Rick said. “That’s why it was so disturbing for him when it came up. His only tangible brush with real hate came while he was walking with his wife in Valley City, and came upon a Ku Klux Klan rally cross burning at a local park. “It gave him the creeps,” Rick said.

In 1903, still a teenager, Stern boarded a ship to America. Morris Stern, Herman’s uncle, and a position in Straus Clothing awaited him in Casselton. By 1908, Stern moved to Valley City, married Adeline Roth in 1912, and by 1920 was owner and manager of Straus Clothing in Valley City, the place he would call home for the rest of his life.

He lived through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, two world wars, and came out on top, but never flaunted wealth. He was active with the Boy Scouts, war bond recruitment drives, later with the United Way, the Rotary Club, Masonic Lodge, the Greater North Dakota Association, which became the Greater North Dakota Chamber, and much more. A memorial was erected in his honor in Valley City in October 2016.

“Whatever was positive for Valley City. Boom. He was there,” Rick said.

In the home, German was reserved for Stern and his wife. His sons never learned the language, it was forbidden when the German Kaiser Wilhelm II waged the First World War.

Before the Second World War, Stern founded the North Dakota Winter Show, the state’s oldest agriculture and livestock show.

“On that day, I remember the dedication,” Rick said. “They pulled this thing down and a big banner dropped revealing the ‘Herman Stern Arena.’ He was so upset, he fell off the stage, and he had two questions afterward: how much did it cost, and who authorized it.”

Herman Stern – photo provided by family

Shortly after Stern’s death, snow collapsed part of the building’s roof, destroying the commemoration sign. “People said, ‘That was grandpa,’” Rick said. “He never liked that sign. He was humble.”

Stern kept himself busy until just before his death at 92 years old.

“He was righteous,” Mike Stern, Rick’s brother said. “I remember I disappointed him once, and I still feel really bad about it.” While coming home from Camp Wilderness, Mike stopped at Lake Melissa to say farewell to friends. He arrived home 30 minutes late, and found his grandfather worried he had been involved in a car accident.

“When your grandfather that you worship says, ‘I’m very disappointed in you,’ that’s something you can’t forget,” Mike said.

The “blessed grandson,” Rick, once borrowed a car and slid on ice, smashing in the rear end. He was able to drive it home, but Stern reacted differently, which ended in a family joke. Stern offered to sell Rick the vehicle, and Rick reminded him not to set the price too high as it had been involved in a bad accident.

Both brothers’ first memory is their grandfather, sitting cross-legged, bouncing them up and down on his knee while humming a German tune.

“We all compare ourselves a little to those who passed before us,” Rick said. “But I feel we all fall so incredibly short of him. We do our best, but it just can’t compare.”

Straus Clothing Store – photograph provided by Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library UND

Holocaust rescuer
America eventually opened its doors to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazis, but the help came too late in 1944. Many European Jews were forced to return to Europe after arriving in the United States. China was one of the only countries that allowed Jews to enter, accepting nearly 23,000 Jewish refugees who found relative safety in Shanghai from 1941 to 1945.

A page in Herman Stern’s ledger – provided by family

Even after World War II finished, liberated Jews emerged from concentration camps and from hiding, ill, exhausted; and discovered a world that seemed to have no place for them.

Stern’s efforts started in the 1930s, years after he brought one of his brothers over from Germany. He needed to prove himself, and show he could support every refugee he vouched for; personal affidavits of his financial worth were needed for every case.

He had a net worth of $50,000, was a shareholder of Straus Clothing Company, owned 320 acres of farmland near Valley City, another net worth of $5,000, according to affidavits filed with the American Consul General in Stuttgart, Germany.

Letters of repute were also needed – for every single case. He obtained these from Fred J. Fredrickson, mayor of Valley City. “During all this time Mr. Stern has been one of the most progressive and substantial citizens and businessmen of our city and state,” Fredrickson wrote.

At first, his petitions seemed to fall on deaf ears. He needed to change the narrative, and find influential people who could help persuade refugee legislation. Correspondence between the National Refugee Service, National Council of Jewish Women, Jewish Welfare Society, Hebrew Sheltering and Immigration Aid Society of America, was frequent.

In 1938, Stern wrote to the American Consul General in Germany, hoping to relieve bureaucratic worries. Some affidavits were rejected, as in the case of Dr. Rudolf Mansbacher, a nerve specialist from Germany who had an affidavit written by an American doctor and was not recognized by the American government.

Senator Gerald Nye – mid 1930s – who quietly helped Herman Stern obtain immigration visas for German relatives – photo provided by Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library UND

“My sponsorships may seem perhaps excessive to you compared to the financial statement, but I can assure you, my dear Consul, that all the immigrants have and will be properly received who are coming in my care. Every immigrant has received a proper home, not alone through my efforts, but also through the assistance of my friends.

“You may be satisfied without any doubt whatsoever that I shall continue to carry out the pledge and that none of the immigrants sponsored by me will become a public charge, but on the contrary, will become useful citizens.”

And many of Stern’s family did. Some joined the war effort. Others found work on farms. Stern searched out hospitals, nursing homes, and area doctors willing to offer qualified refugees work.

Doctors were needed in American hospitals, a 1939 pamphlet from the American Medical Association reported. From 1934 to 1938, during the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist regime, 1,528 physicians migrated to the United States, of which 75 percent were Jews. During the same years, the United States had 170,000 physicians, which meant one doctor for every 784 people.

Despite the need for qualified doctors, the system was rigged against him. Few doctors from Europe could pass American medical standard tests, and needed further training. Stern began looking into medical schools.

“After making further canvass I am still of the same opinion that fifty doctors could be placed in our state, but at present our hands are tied,” Stern wrote to Charles Jordan of the Central Committee for Resettlement of Foreign Physicians on July 1, 1939. “All we can do is to interview our prominent doctors all over the state and see if we can in some way influence these men so they will gradually recommend modifying the rules and attitude of the National Organization.”

Stern found an empathizer in Dr. Irvine Lavine, who assisted placing refugee doctors around the state.

ND Governor John Moses

Fresh off the boat after journeys circumnavigating the globe, many stayed at the Stern family house in Valley City after they first arrived. Gustavas Straus traveled through Trinidad, Hans Wertheim through Chile.

Mike remembered stories his father told him of frequently having dinner with relatives he had never known. “Our dad was a little upset sometimes – he was young – because he couldn’t get seconds or thirds,” Mike said.

Nobody went hungry. Stern’s wife, Adeline Roth, 22 at the time, never wavered in her support for her husband’s efforts, Rick said.

In 1939, Stern had a scare. A medical report from the Dakota Clinic in Fargo reported no disease had been found on his heart after X-rays. The pain he was experiencing then was probably stemming from muscle or nerve issues, or more likely, although the medical report made no mention, from the stress of trying to save his family.

On March 27, 1941, two years after World War II started, Stern wrote to the National Council of Jewish Women in St. Louis, Missouri.

“I am endeavoring to gain admittance of four adults and two children into Cuba as a temporary quarter until it is possible to gain visas for them to come to the United States of America. The relatives in question are now living in Paris. They are not French citizens, but are refugees from Germany.

In order to obtain permission to travel to Cuba, Stern was told to deposit $2,000 per person in a Cuban bank, with $500 bond placed with the Cuban government, also for each person, plus two round trip tickets, and lawyer fees up to $250.

Records safely tucked away in box nine at UND’s Chester Fritz Library Department of Special Collections, end before 1944, and Stern had already found ways to bring more than 125 refugees to North Dakota. Most dispersed across the nation, few remained behind, Rick said.

Most of the letters to Stern are in German, written by hand in impeccable penmanship reminiscent of a medieval scribe translating holy texts. Other letters are typed, but there’s little need for a translation.

The Talmud translates best: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” a letter written by Hans Wertheim in 1939 to Stern said. “You may be sure that we shall never forget your kindness and what you have done for us. We are glad to know that there are people who are willing to help us.”

“In later years people would say, ‘We owe you so much,’ but he would say, ‘No, you don’t owe me anything,’” Rick said.

Stern kept his efforts mostly quiet, except to his family. He never wanted the publicity or the acknowledgement, he only wanted to help steer men and women toward successful futures.

If Stern were alive today, sitting around the dinner with friends and family, Mike, his grandson said he would know how to answer questions about society’s recent polarization. He might pound the table dynamically with a fist, but his thick German accent would be impossible not to listen to.

“I think Grandpa would be welcoming immigrants and trying to get them plugged into the community, into Boy Scouts, or joining the church,” Mike said.

A short pamphlet Stern wrote and used to pass out, explains his views perfectly.  

“Without strength of character, we are a ship without a rudder, lost in the sea of no return… Respect the views, practices, and habits of others. Be more than tolerant, be understanding. In dealing with people, learn to respect and understand their position. Judge an individual not on his race, creed, or economic standing, judge him for what is in him.”

 

‘A thousand Saddams’

A Yazidi family’s journey from war-torn Iraq to America

By C.S. Hagen     
MOORHEAD – Today, Ezzat Khudhur Alhaidar is safe from ISIS guns, but the memories of war still haunt him. In 2005, he donned a U.S. Army uniform and began working as a front-line interpreter, a position that put food in his belly and a target on his back.

He leans back into a leather sofa while his wife, Zaman Alo, finishes setting a makeshift table with a mound of biryani, steaming hot chickpea soup. Onions covered with sumac follow. Four more dishes take up the table’s last inches, which doubles as a nightstand: homemade pickled green tomatoes, olives, a sumac salad, and chicken kabob pieces, tastes of Alhaidar’s homeland in Iraq. He bemoans the lack of proper Iraqi kabobs, also known as kafta; the taste here is just not the same.

Volume blaring, Alhaidar’s five children finish watching “The Emoji Movie.” After only three years in America, his eldest children speak English with ease, explaining the movie’s plot. His second youngest daughter performs cartwheels with the grace of an Olympic athlete on the living room floor. The apartment walls are sparse; few pictures or decorations accompanied the family on their flight from Iraq, but the apartment is home and it’s safe.

They’re Yazidi, an ethno-religious minority, persecuted for centuries because of their adherence to Yazidism, the oldest Mesopotamian religion. Alhaidar obtained U.S. visas three months before the most recent pogrom against Yazidis began, watching news reports helplessly of neighbors and family fleeing before ISIS’s onslaught.

Ezzat Alhaidar – photo by C.S. Hagen

When Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003 during Operation Red Dawn, Alhaidar remembers feeling relief. During Hussein’s reign, no one dared breathe the dictator’s name, let alone speak ill of the government. If suspected of dissatisfaction, one could face flesh-eating acid in one of multiple torture chambers, Alhaidar said. Few came out alive.

As a child when he saw police, he remembers shivering with fear. “It was not life,” Alhaidar said. “We were the happiest people when we got rid of Saddam, but we didn’t know after Saddam, a thousand Saddams would come to the country. If there was a choice between now and Saddam, we would not choose Saddam.”

The ISIS invasion of Yazidi areas came quickly in 2014, with no time to raise alarms. The Peshmerga, the Iraqi Kurdistan forces, promised safety but fled before oncoming ISIS troops. One night, Yazidi villages went to sleep and awoke the next morning with ISIS in charge.

And then from 6,000 miles away, Alhaidar watched as the slaughter began.

The Yazidi people are regarded as people of a different faith who need to be killed or converted to Islam. Once before, they were targeted by Muslim extremists, primarily Sunni jihadists, after the US invasion of Iraq in 2014.

ISIS jihadists have been mostly beaten back, but Alhaidar’s relatives still have no home. After the massacres began, Alhaidar managed visas for his mother, a few nephews and nieces, from America, but other family still remain behind. They live in refugee camps and are unable to return home.

More than 40,000 Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar, identified as the final resting place of Noah’s ark, and nearly half a million people poured into Dohuk, the Kurdish north, in one of the largest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.

Villages were decimated. More than 5,000 people were killed in two days. Another 7,600 women were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery, many still missing. No less than 3,000 children were sent to brainwashing, indoctrination schools to learn how to become future terrorists, Alhaidar said.

Most of the ISIS forces were recognizable faces, Alhaidar said, coming from neighboring towns, and not foreign fighters.

“What can we expect of these kids in the future?” Alhaidar said. “We were crying over here. ISIS attacked my people. People have become hopeless, homeless.”

Growing up hard
At 16, Alhaidar rose with the sun to haul bricks on his back. Not manageable red baked bricks but heavy construction bricks, with a daily quota of 100, for $25 in pay.

“Life is hard, sometimes, and harsh, it can crush you,” Alhaidar said. “But I got a lesson from the bricks: if I didn’t go to school I knew I would spend my life hauling those bricks.”

In ancient times, Yazidi culture and religious rituals were passed orally from generation to generation. They do not have their own schools, and mosques were avoided to deter conversion.

Historically, the Yazidi have been attacked repeatedly by neighbors. Atrocities were recorded by researchers, historians, and writers, such as Henry Austen Layard. One genocide occurred in Shekhan Province, close to Mosul, after fleeing Yazidi were trapped along the Tigris River due to spring flooding. Yazidi women jumped into the river to escape conversion, according to Laynard.

A second genocide occurred in Sinjar Province, when Ottoman soldiers beheaded Yazidis.

Picture of Yazidis before terrorist firing squads – from Ezzat Alhaidar’s Facebook

The Alhaidar family is originally from Sinjar, but his parents fled from oppression to a village called Kabartu, where Alhaidar was born. Later, Hussein’s regime destroyed their village and grouped 12 villages into a collective called Omayya. After Saddam fell from power, the collective was renamed Khanke.  

Although the villagers were also Yazidi, Alhaidar’s family was never accepted into the community, he said. Alhaidar’s father, formerly a shepherd, became a day laborer to put food on the table, and life for his family was difficult.

“They were always higher, as we were not from that village,” Alhaidar said.

Life became harder after his father died in 2004. Without money to take him to the hospital, his father asked a friend for help, but he passed away the next day.

“After my father’s death, my life became harder, and I felt that I had to walk alone with no support,” Alhaidar said. “My brothers and sister and my mother were in the situation, and were doing their best, yet nothing could be compared to my father. Before my father’s death, we would barely think about the tough or hard side of life.”

Refugee camps currently in use in Duhok area, Iraq – photo provided by BRHA Duhok

In 2013, the government handed out land parcels to the villagers, but not to his family. “They were mean, and they were always the people of the situation, nobody could raise their face to say ‘Hey, we’re over here.’”

“We were always getting attacked by those around us, and by that I mean Muslims,” Alhaidar said. “The only reason we were oppressed was because of our religion, which makes it difficult to maintain our culture.”

He began studying late into every night at the Iraq University of Dohuk. College was free, but he still needed money for food, clothes, and lodging. Some days, he borrowed clothes to attend classes. A brother helped with a loan of 500 dinars, the equivalent of $300.

While his friends were getting married and buying cars, Alhaidar worried about enough cash for his next meal. A dowry for marriage seemed an impossible dream. He spoke his native Kurdish, also Arabic and English, and saw opportunity when U.S. armed forces came, once again, to his homeland in 2003.

He signed up as an interpreter.

“That decision changed my life,” Alhaidar said. “And it changed the lives of all the people around me. Because of that decision to join the U.S. Army, I brought 28 people to the US and they are working, smiling, while if they were left over there, whatever you say is not enough, at the very least they would have no jobs.”

As a U.S. Army interpreter
“If you were a minority, you were gone. If you were US Army and coming from vacation, you were gone,” Alhaidar said about a lonely road he frequently had to travel. “Gone” means a quick bullet or indefinite imprisonment for exchange. Al-Qaeda terrorists would not frequently target military Humvees, but rather the vehicles following behind.

“I was an easy target for them,” Alhaidar said.

Being Yazidi and an interpreter for an invading force, and frequently meeting face to face with terrorists during interrogation sessions, meant he had to take extra precautions. Frequently, suspected terrorists were interviewed, then released two weeks later.

“We were safe, but we were scared to go anywhere,” Alhaidar said. He always watched for tailing cars, never went to Mosul. Terrorists targeted interpreters and their families. Stories of fellow interpreters ambushed by terrorists kept him on edge. Such as the story of one man who broke 27 bones during an Al-Qaeda sneak attack.

Before joining the US Army, food was scarce. Afterward, he could eat his fill. “You could smell the food a mile from the restaurant,” Alhaidar said.

He went on duty for 45 days in a row, then came home for six. He also worked as an advisor for US troops, helping differentiate between friend and suicide bomber. When he saw indiscriminate shooting, it was one of his jobs to stop the soldiers or private mercenaries and tell them the differences between Orange Zones and Red Zones, the latter meaning dangerous areas.

Ezzat Alhaidar while an interpreter for US Army – Facebook page photo

The stress of war, constant vigilance, leaving his home country to start a new life in a strange land, has taken its toll, Alhaidar said. He opens a kitchen cupboard and returns with a brown paper bag, filled with prescription medicine for PTSD. He’s improved over the years he’s lived in Moorhead, but is filled with a longing to help his people, as well as the new American community in Fargo/Moorhead.

He’s tried for help at the local Veterans Hospital, but was denied. The U.S. Army does not consider him a veteran.

“We wore the same uniform, wore the same boots, went on the same missions, and could be killed at any moment in Iraq and Afghanistan, but unfortunately, today, they do not recognize us as veterans,” Alhaidar said.

Ezzat Alhaidar showing his PTSD medicines – photo by C.S. Hagen

“It’s not about money. The U.S. Army was a school, and I was proud to be a student in that school. I was a part of it. But they said ‘No, rules are rules.’ Even if they could consider us veterans, and not pay us anything, that would be fine.

“Are you a veteran?” Alhaidar pretended to be military doctor questioning himself.

“No. I don’t have a paper. So what do they call it when I was working with them? Part of our duties meant that if we weren’t there, many more US soldiers would have been killed.”

Additional duties included interpreting any communication between Iraqi and US forces, talking with village leaders, learning where the dangerous spots were, and locating IEDs.

Alhaidar was injured once when his Humvee was ordered to lead a nocturnal drive without headlights and they smashed into a gravel pile. He marched with soldiers into war, accompanied searches for terrorists going house to house, relayed information quickly under fire.

“We were between them,” Alhaidar said. “We would know who was lying and who was a danger.”

Once, a commanding officer known to Alhaidar as Captain Kingman, ordered him from the safety of a Humvee to accompany an ambulance into Mosul Province.

“Even a crazy person wouldn’t go into Mosul in an ambulance,” Alhaidar said. “No armor, no protection.”

He survived, but the same captain also required him to translate while he cursed elderly village leaders. “And you know, in Iraqi community, that was not allowed,” Alhaidar said. “We were there to protect people.”

The U.S. Army had one rule he can’t forget: never chase terrorists if they ran away.

“These bitter moments gave me lessons in life,” Alhaidar said. “I’m a new American, but even in Iraq I was American in my soul.”

Because of his role helping the U.S. Army, officials said he would be protected, but Alhaidar waited more than a year before obtaining a visa, during which time he saved enough money to purchase a house and find a wife, with a $7,000 dowry.

After he left the military in 2012, he worked as a teacher with Weatherford, an oil company. Working 15 days on and 15 off, he also started a computer shop and a learning center for teaching English as a second language.

The Alhaidar family – photo by C.S. Hagen

America
Over sips of cloying Iraqi tea, Alhaidar knows he is one of the more fortunate interpreters, one of thousands who worked with the U.S. Army during its post-9/11 military operations. In exchange for their services, Iraqis who collaborated were promised special visas, but the Special Immigrant Visa program became backlogged. Some are considered traitors by insurgents, and are actively hunted. Identities were kept secret.

President Donald Trump’s Administration travel ban has recently created new obstacles for the Army’s former Iraqi partners, and many are being denied visas.

In May 2014, however, Alhaidar packed his family’s lives into eight suitcases. He filled four with his most precious possessions – books – some Kurdish, some Arabic, and others in English. Hard drives and photo albums, the only transportable keepsakes he could bring, went into another suitcase.

Traveling through Jordan, his family landed in Chicago after a 14-hour flight.

“Everything was green, everything was beautiful, but we still knew our trip was not done,” Alhaidar said. A type of sadness came over his family during their layover in Jordan. Their home for countless generations seemed far away.

Today, Alhaidar has three bachelor’s degrees, and is active in community development. Neither Republican nor Democrat, he believes in dealing with issues, and not following a political line. He’s building a nonprofit organization, and is active with Mindful Seeds, a leadership program in the Fargo/Moorhead area.

Settling into America hasn’t been easy, but slowly, his children are growing used to the area. Alhaidar’s wife is in school, and he has found work, but is looking for more meaningful employment, perhaps one day in politics.

“Life has started to smile on us.”

With recent hate crime incidents in Fargo, seven cases so far in 2017, Alhaidar challenges people to make attempts to understand world events. He is no stranger to hate crimes. In Iraq, he was part of a close circle of friends including engineers, doctors, veterinarians, and technicians, with himself as a teacher, who once, when life was simpler, enjoyed picnics, a few beers, and music together.

“Due to tensions, discrimination, sectarian religious and political issues, and adding to that, ISIS attacks, there is barely anyone left in this group anymore. They all left the country. Each went to a different country, whether in Europe, America, or Australia, to start a new life away from their childhood memories.

“Life is about stepping toward each other and building trust,” Alhaidar said. “Even white supremacists we should listen to. We have to be careful of our daily actions, and see Fargo/Moorhead as a colorful community. Today, the life of Moorhead is the life of our kids.”

 

Speaker at NDSU Purports Racist and Anti-LGBTQ Agenda

Pre-organized advertisement speaker linked to Confederate hate group

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – A week before William Fleck decided to attend an anti-LGBTQ speech at NDSU, a transgender friend committed suicide. Fleck’s friend was bullied. He was persecuted – locally – and driven to a desperate act.

Fleck knew what he was walking into when he entered the Memorial Prairie Rose Room on October 17, but the audience’s acceptance still shocked him.

He attended the speech entitled “Religious Freedom and the Constitution,” organized by the Lutheran Student Fellowship Organization, and delivered by Jake MacAulay, the chief operating officer of the Institute on the Constitution.

Jake MacAulay with Pastor Steve Schultz and Representative Chris Olson at NDSU – MacAulay Instagram photo

The Institute on the Constitution is more than another benign-sounding name. At a time when the AltRight is twisting semantics to soften their collective messages, it’s listed as a legal arm of Michael Peroutka of the League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is also reported as a theocratic, Christian nationalist outfit run by white supremacists, according to the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

“I just wanted to make sure that I could tell the people that they could talk to me if they had questions,” Fleck said, “so that suicides like my friend’s would never happen again. When you get this far right, the opinions and other viewpoints tend to fade away. I needed to interject a new viewpoint that was personal to me.”

The speech focused on homeschooling, but also implied that being LGBTQ should be illegal, and defended slavery by advocating George Washington’s slavery practices weren’t so bad, because he let them stay in their houses when they became too old to work.  

“It became quite obvious from the get-go that this was a lot more political,” Fleck said. “It was a very Libertarian Christian mixture. From the get-go, I wanted to go speak there so I could show these people there is a different side of things. He compared being LGBTQ to jumping off a building. You wouldn’t want someone to jump off a building, so why would we let people be LGBTQ? It was very subtle.”

While MacAulay spoke, the audience listened, sometimes nodding and communicating verbal agreement, Fleck said.

“The audience was very receptive and engaged,” Fleck said. “The speaker would often have mottos on slides and ask the audience to repeat them with him.  They would occasionally verbally agree with the speaker when he made a point that they agreed with.”

With approximately 30 people in the audience, no one spoke against MacAulay, Fleck said.

“No one did anything,” Fleck said. “I was really shocked. It was blatant racism. It was insane.”

The speaker was advertised on the NDSU website as a “discussion on the American view of law and government, the Biblical purpose of civil government, how to combat Common Core,” among other issues. The advertisement reported the Institute on the Constitution as an educational outreach organization presenting American founders’ view of American law and government, and that MacAulay is an ordained minister who established the American Club, a constitutional study group.

When MacAulay spoke of America’s first president’s slavery practices, Fleck couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I was shocked, my mouth dropped, and my mouth has never dropped before,” Fleck said. “I’m interested in LGBTQ+ rights because I have been harassed almost my entire life for being LGBTQ, and have had many transgender friends who have suffered unimaginable pain because people treat them terribly. I think that awareness of racism is stronger than ever, but that the awareness has caused many to push back and expose deep racial tensions in America that were previously ignored or swept under the rug.”

Fleck was the only one to speak out, he said, and he waited until the end.

“I did that during the Q and A session because I didn’t want to interrupt him. The speaker intentionally wanted people to get riled up and even said at one point that he wished there was a wall full of protestors.”

When Fleck finally spoke, he didn’t address the speaker, he talked to the audience.

“Do not address these people, ignore them, they are playing a culture war,” Fleck said.

The speech comes after white supremacist fliers were found on NDSU campus, after letters from the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were sent to the university’s newspaper, as well as many other campus newspapers in North Dakota and across the nation, and after another speaker earlier in the school year tried to promote an anti-LGBTQ agenda.

MacAuley was formerly involved with the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition, and also with the Minnesota-based “hard rock homophobic ministry, You Can Run But You Can’t Hide International,” according to the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

The group’s leader, Bradley Dean Smith, has been quoted saying it is moral to execute LGBT people.

MacAuley also claims that “half of the murders in large cities were committed by homosexuals,” according to the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights.

After the speech, Fleck approached a member of the organizing committee, Lutheran Student Fellowship Organization, and asked if they had done adequate background checks on the speaker. The response he received disappointed him.

“These are our views on the Constitution,” the person reportedly said.  

Fleck is active in politics. He’s president of the NDSU College Democrats, program director for College Democrats of North Dakota, and he’s also a volunteer for the transgender advocacy organization called the Darcy Jeda Corbitt Foundation.

Sadie Rudolph, media relations coordinator at NDSU, said students are authorized to invite speakers to their own events.   The university’s institutional equity and compliance statement says it is “fully committed to equal opportunity and affirmative action,” and its policies enforce a “strong denouncement of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.”

Attempts were made to contact Lutheran Student Fellowship Organization President Jared Rudolph, advisor Benton Duncan, and treasurer Holly Johnson, but none replied.

 

College newspapers targeted by KKK

Since Charlottesville, Ku Klux Klan attempts to appeal to college minds

By C.S. Hagen
VALLEY CITY – The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are targeting North Dakota university newspapers in a cry for help: a book banning.

So far, Valley City State University’s ‘Viking News,’ and NDSU’s ‘The Spectrum,’ have received a letter postmarked Fort Myers, Florida, with no return address, from someone claiming to be a “Loyal American Patriot,” asking for for help banning a book titled ‘The Slave Players,’ by Megan Allen, published by Burn House Publishing.

KKK letter sent to university newspapers in North Dakota

“Dear Editor: Recently, we have come under extreme fire for being a hate group,” the KKK letter began. “This couldn’t be further from the truth. We follow the teachings of the Bible and only wish to keep the white race pure as God intended for his chosen people. Only those who live in ignorance call us hateful.”

The anonymous writer then targets “loudmouth literature,” a work of fiction and a love story, which was “clearly written just to agitate the college-educated, who always think they have a better answer for the woes of the world.”

The KKK letter writer further states Allen is a “white woman who knows little about white society.”

On the Burn House Publishing website, Allen mentions the KKK targeting her book on October 10. “I really just set out to write a novel about racial injustice and maybe weave in a good love story. And the AltRight has decided to beat the hell out of me for it. It must be good though, or they wouldn’t care so much.”

Burn House Publishing also replied, stressing that the critics are refusing to identify themselves. “To the skeptic who wrote us. The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently investigating the KKK attacks on our behalf. They have great resources and lots of experience in tracking down and exposing them for what they are.”

Since the Charlottesville, Virginia rallies in August, which left one woman dead, the AltRight and other pro-white activist groups appear to have changed tactics. Instead of marching with tiki torches, they’re sending out mail to further agendas. Pro-white hate groups have also attempted to become more socially acceptable in recent years, replacing words like “genocide” with “ethnic replacement,” not using “white nationalist,” and choosing “identitarian” instead.

Groups like the KKK also maintain that whites may not be superior, but that whites need a homeland of their own. Instead of saying, “purge non-white people,” they twist semantics to call such minority groups criminals, rapists, and terrorists.

Halfway through the letter, the writer quoted a line from the book, which the KKK finds hateful.

Envelope used to target a student newspaper in Valley City, ND

“There will come a time when blacks stop praying for salvation and start praying for bombs of their own,” the letter stated.

“Who says that? That’s the kind of hateful talk that can start a racial uprising, and is about as un-American as you can get. Most Americans we talk to support the banning of this book. Brown or colored or white it should make no difference. Hate is hate.”

The KKK is currently attempting to apply pressure on Google to have the website taken down.

“They’ve been sending those to school papers for a while if they got down to the V’s,” Jenni Lou Russi, a media teacher and editor at Valley City State University said. She found the letter in school mail on Tuesday.

The envelope is handwritten, but the letter is typed, a form letter, with the KKK logo on the upper left hand side. The incident isn’t Russi’s first brush with racist organizations. A few years ago someone put a swastika on the sidewalk in front of her house the night before the first night of Chanukah.

“Is this demographic their market?” Russi said. Why were college newspapers targeted instead of professional media?

Jack Hastings, editor in chief of NDSU’s “The Spectrum,” said he had just received the letter, and wasn’t sure what his office was going to do with it yet.

“I guess I’m surprised and slightly disturbed by it too,” Hastings said. “First off, the presence of a group such as the KKK surprised me, but now they’re targeting college campuses. Seeing this delivered to our office is upsetting to me.”

College campuses are places of study, full of potentially susceptible minds eager to learn more about the world they’re preparing to enter.  

“Most college papers are pretty liberal, maybe they’re trying to sway that,” Hastings said. “This letter seems like a call to action. It has the potential to maybe grow, and it could pick up easily on a campus, more than a city newspaper.”

About a week ago, the campus was hit with “Identity Evropa,” white supremacist posters, which were quickly taken down, Hastings said. “Identity Evropa” is a defined as a racist white supremacist organization by the Anti-Defamation League, and designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Despite hate group attempts to reach out to college students, Hastings said he believes most people won’t be persuaded.

“It seems like everyone is aware that this is not ethical or even moral,” Hastings said. “I feel like the public here is pretty accepting and accommodating to people when it comes to race.”

Other university newspapers were called for comment, but would not go on record or could not be reached.

 

Hate crime resolution passes in Fargo

With the recent uptick in local hate crimes, the city says no more

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Fargo City Commissioners passed a resolution to establish the city as a hate-free community on Monday, and one commissioner voted against the bill.

The resolution was originally written by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, and passed unanimously by the Human Relations Commission in September, before it was handed over to city officials. The resolution requires city leaders to officially recognize hate crimes, speak out when hate crimes are committed, and puts additional pressure on the city to become a more inclusive city.

City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn was the lone voice against the resolution, which passed before a room full of concerned citizens.

“It doesn’t accomplish anything,” Piepkorn said after the meeting. “We got more important things to do.”

Human Relations Commission Chair Rachel Hoffman presented the resolution saying it was a statement about Fargo being an inclusive community, and that the city will no longer tolerate hate crimes.

“Asking us to weigh in on an inclusive memorandum for our city, the exact same resolution went before Moorhead, and will go before West Fargo, and will be a regional approach to the issue of inclusion,” City Commissioner John Strand said.

He reminded city leaders and the crowd present that this was the week that white supremacist rallies and counter rallies were planned days following the Charlottesville, Virginia AltRight rally that left one woman, Heather Heyer, dead.

“That is part of the context about inclusion, and we want to be positive and inclusive of all people,” Strand said. He went on to point out that weeks ago Amazon was looking for a city to invest in, and people asked “Why not Fargo?” Strand said.

“Inclusion is a fundamental requirement by Amazon,” Strand said. “They will only move to a community that is inclusive, and this is a contemporary topic and one we should be embracing in every regard, and we should always be respectful of every individual, and protecting of every individual.”

North Dakota currently does not have hate crime legislation; Minnesota does. Already in 2017, Fargo has documented at least six crimes that were racially motivated, or are being investigated as potentially racially motivated crimes.

Barry Nelson, of North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, is one of the leaders who plans to propose hate crime legislation to state government in 2018. An attempt at establishing hate crime laws was previously made, and failed, but today, North Dakota is second in the nation for hate crime incidents, per capita.

To combat hate crimes, which are different than crimes of a similar nature, laws must be made, advocates of hate crime legislation say. Hate crimes are different because they are based on hate, intolerance, and misunderstanding, and victims can possibly be chosen at random, as in the case at a local Walmart when Amber Elizabeth Hensley screamed, “We’re going to kill all of you…” to three Somali American women this summer.

The resolution comes at a time when the city is also looking into discovering the costs of refugees, a movement spearheaded by Dave Piepkorn, who sees refugee resettlement as an “unfunded mandate,” and maintains that the state should have more of a say in deciding how many refugees it can take per year.

During the same city commissioners’ meeting,, Fargo Cass Public Health Director Ruth Roman gave a report saying her agency looked at the Family Health Care Center, Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, and Cultural Diversity Resources for interpreting services, and decided the city should stick with Family Health Care Center.

Typically, $25,000 is used per year for translation and interpreter fees, but the costs are increasing up to approximately $36,000, Roman said.

Currently, Fargo is footing the bill for translation and interpretation fees on medical issues, monies which are not entirely used on refugees. International students, visitors, among others, are included in such services, Roman said.

“Yes, some of this is for our new Americans,” Roman said. “But not all are refugees.”

Interpretation services must be offered to obtain other federal monies, Roman said. At first she relied on family members to help translate, but that tactic proved to be unreliable at best.

“We should be getting reimbursed, this is Fargo money and it’s very confusing and I’m not that bright of a guy,” Piepkorn said. He added that 80 percent of the refugees coming to North Dakota are brought to Fargo.

“I’m asking about tax monies, and I don’t apologize for asking these questions,” Piepkorn said. “What’s funny is that they’re the ones calling me racial epithets, isn’t that funny? But I got thick skin.”

“I want us to be cautious that we do not single any groups out,” Strand said. “All citizens deserve equitable treatment under the law.”

Savanna’s murder suspects plead not guilty

By C.S. Hagen 
FARGO – Brooke Lynn Crews pled not guilty to all charges related to Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind’s murder and kidnapping of her child in Cass County District Court on Thursday. Crews’ live-in boyfriend, William Henry Hoehn, also entered a not guilty plea on Wednesday, according to court documents.

Brooke Lynn Crews and William Henry Hoehn – photo provided by the Fargo Police Department

The couple were charged with class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and after Greywind’s body was found, wrapped tightly in plastic and duct tape, snagged by a tree in the middle of the Red River, the suspects face additional charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to give false information to police.

Crews entered the courtroom shackled, dressed in prison orange, and remained expressionless while waiting for court proceedings to begin. The 38-year-old understood all the charges when read to her, and her attorney, Steve Mottinger, entered the plea for his client.

“We ask the court to enter a plea of not guilty on all counts,” Mottinger said. He also asked the court to postpone trial for 60 days in order for the defense to properly prepare. The next court date was moved from November 29, until January 3, 2018 at 10:30am. Hoehn is scheduled to reappear in court on December 6 at 10:30am.

Both suspects have so far not accepted invitations for interviews. They formerly lived at Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North, Fargo, which is where police report Greywind was killed. Her baby, Haisley Jo, was found on August 24 in the custody of Crews, according to police.

Bail for the couple had been set at $2 million, and was not changed on Thursday.

 

Nation, city, misleading public on refugee costs

Refugees cost taxpayers money, but the buck doesn’t stop there

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – All fingers point to refugees being cost positive for cities, states, and the nation, and yet pressure from the Trump Administration on local city leaders to curb the influx of “huddled masses” persists.

In Washington D.C., Trump Administration officials are refusing to recognize a recent study performed by the Department of Health and Human Services, or H.H.S., that reported refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenue over the past decade than they cost, according to the Washington Post and New York Times.

A different study, also ignored, came from Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, or LEO, a research department at the University of Notre Dame. The March 2017 study stated refugee resettlement is cost-beneficial to the United States, especially with resettled children.

Over a 20-year period, refugees who entered the United States between 18 and 45 years of age, paid taxes in excess of support received by $21,200.

The White House defended its rejection of the study by saying H.H.S.’s conclusions were illegitimate and politically motivated, according to the New York Times. And yet right-wing media outlets, such as Breitbart, refuse to report on such numbers, reporting instead that taxpayers will spend $4.1 billion in 2017 to support 519,018 refugees resettled in the United States since 2009. Little to no mention is made of refugee benefits in the article.

In Fargo, a similar pattern has emerged. Despite the lack of hard, cold, statistical data, reports and testimonies from business leaders, entrepreneurs, police, human rights organizations, and new Americans echo national findings, saying refugees are beneficial for Fargo and the state.

“Unfortunately, the refugee and immigrant controversy is no longer about fact-finding,” Hukun Abdullahi, member of the Moorhead Human Rights Commission and North Dakota United Against Hate, said.

Originally from Somalia, Abdullahi has taken a stand against recent immigration issues and increasing hate crimes in Fargo. Washington D.C.’s anti-refugee agenda has spread like a virus, infecting local governments and encouraging bigots to target New Americans and trump up political agendas.

“This issue is more about Making America Great Again or in other words, Making America White again,” Abdullahi said. “Historically, immigrants and refugees have been blessed to obtain bipartisan support. Maybe that was because most immigrants and refugees were white and Christian at the time. They were able to blend in more easily and were perceived more ‘American’ per se. With growing numbers of immigrants who are no longer white or Christian, this has really made people think about what America has become, and thus want their country back.”

The country, the state, and even Fargo’s demographics have changed, and xenophobia lies at the root of such opposition, Abdullahi said.

“There is nothing wrong to that about having an opinion,” Abdullahi said. “What is wrong, however, is there are still groups of people who never want immigrants and refugees to be seen as equal to them.”

Within President Donald Trump’s first week of taking office, the refugee issue came under fierce debate when Trump signed an executive order stating “Secretary of State shall, within one year of the date of this order, provide a report on the estimated long-term costs of USRAP (United States Refugee Admissions Program) at the federal, state, and local levels.”

In Fargo, the fire was lit during a Fargo City Commissioners meeting on October 24, 2016, by Dave Piepkorn, who also serves as deputy mayor, when he attacked Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, a nonprofit group responsible for handling refugees in the state.

Piepkorn wants to know the costs of refugees, an obscure price tag as few agencies distinguish refugees from other racial types. Piepkorn sees refugee resettlement as an unfunded mandate, and that the state should have the right to decide on the numbers of refugees it allows. He’s also stated that refugees are depressing wages locally, and receiving benefits other residents are not receiving.

Trump’s chief policy adviser, Stephen Miller, is using identical tactics form public opinion. Miller is concerned only with costs, not fiscal benefits, when determining the annual refugee cap, which he is attempting to slice by more than half, or less than 50,000 for the nation. On Wednesday, Trump’s Administration announced it capped the amount of refugees the nation would accept at 45,000 US, which means with 19,000 from Africa, 17,500 for the Near East and South Asia, 5,000 for East Asia, 2,000 for Europe and Central Asia, and 1,500 for Latin America and the Caribbean.

So far, Piepkorn has expressed similar if not identical considerations, despite the repeated attempts of city officials, Lutheran Social Services, and leaders from the Fargo Human Relations Commission, to discuss the issues.

Instead of agreeing to sit-downs with local leaders, Piepkorn has made his views known on right-wing radio stations such as AM 1100 The Flag Need to Know Morning Show, where Piepkorn took partial credit for influencing the former Trump special adviser Steve Bannon’s platform against immigrants.

Piepkorn has been repeatedly contacted for comment, but so far refuses to answer telephone calls or call back.

“Let’s have a conversation,” Barry Nelson, of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition and the Fargo Human Relations Commission, said. “Dave Piepkorn has never reached out to any one of us who did this at his request. He’s never wanted to talk about it, and again he didn’t show up for the report.”

Although Piepkorn has led the charge against the displaced in Fargo, he failed to appear at one of the most important meetings pertaining to the issue.

“To me, it is a lack of leadership to not only deny the facts and figures that do not agree with that so-called leader’s ideology or opinions, but it is inhumane and immoral to target a group of residents and citizens to advance one’s agenda,” Nelson said.

To combat rising hate crimes, the Human Relations Commission passed a resolution originally proposed by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO, establishing Fargo as a hate-free community. The resolution was passed on to the Fargo City Commission this week to be voted on next month, and was passed unanimously by the Moorhead City Commission on Monday.

“It puts the city on record as saying that these crimes keep occurring and allowing city leaders to make a statement that this city won’t tolerate hate crimes,” Nelson said.

Despite the national upheaval on immigration issues, those that are behind such political agendas and racist reforms are numerically inferior, Abdullahi said.

“Fortunately for us, this group of people is very small,” Abdullahi said. “The denial of facts from the US Government is an example how such a small group of people in influential positions could still disrupt lives of many and diminish the value of what immigrants and refugees are contributing in their new society.”

Some numbers Piepkorn has been searching for have been discovered, such as financial costs provided by the Fargo Police Department, nursing and interpreter costs from Cass County Public Health. Most agencies, however, do not track refugees.

Since January 2002, 3,677 refugees have been settled in Fargo, according to a Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota report. New Americans are employers, taxpayers, and field workers, choosing occupations few local citizens are willing to apply for.

Statistically, what is known at the local level is that refugees contributed $542.8 million to the city’s GDP in 2014, and have a spending power of $149.4 million, according to the Refugee Resettlement in Fargo report, a study commissioned to the Fargo Human Relations Commission to perform and released in April.

First-generation immigrants are cost-positive in North Dakota by approximately $3,250, and long-term benefits are incalculable, according to the study and the City of Fargo’s Community Development Department. First-generation households are cost-positive by $4,900, making North Dakota the second most cost-positive state in the nation.

Between 2011 and 2013, immigrants in North Dakota paid $133.9 million in taxes and spent $425.7 million, according to the Fargo Human Relations Commission’s first report, released in February 2017.

Nationally, since 2011, the U.S. Refugee Admission Program has received approximately 655,000 applications, with more than 75 percent of the applicants fleeing from Iraq, Myanmar, Syria, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bhutan, according to the United States Government Accountability Office, or GAO.

In 2016, the United States admitted 85,000 refugees, the largest yearly number in more than 15 years, according to GAO.

“This is not cost overruns on a bridge or road construction. This is not a debate about whether or not to construct a city hall or a dam,” Nelson said. “This is putting a target squarely on the backs of men, women and children who ask only that they have a chance, just like most of our ancestors, to begin a new life in safety and security.

“This is putting human beings in harm’s way. Is that the moral leadership we want and expect in our community, in our country? I truly hope that the moral leadership and citizenry of our community will look at the true facts of refugee resettlement and see this kind of discounting and targeting for the basest and cruelest of human instincts that it is.”

Historically, the refugee debate is nothing new. In the 1840s, Americans turned their hatred on the Irish fleeing famine when potato blight struck. At that time, newspapers reported the Irish were disease-ridden, they threatened American jobs and welfare budgets, they practiced an alien religion, they were rapists and criminals — charges remarkably similar to accusations made in Fargo in 2016 by Valley News Live — and more recently by Commissioner Piepkorn — against the area’s refugees and new Americans.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Chinese, at that time, were escaping persecution and civil wars, and because of their distinct culture, their Qing-styled queues, they became easily-identifiable targets for racial “purists,” who accused them of depriving jobs, unionizing the mining industry, and forcing the lowering of wages. The blatantly racist policy was not abandoned until 1943, when China became an ally with the United States against Japan.

The list goes on: French-speaking Catholic Acadians in 1755, Germans in 1848, Jewish refugees in 1848 and 1939, Vietnamese refugees in 1975, seven Middle Eastern countries in 2017.

Ironically, while Americans favored keeping the world’s downtrodden from its shores, one of the nation’s foremost and secret goals after World War II was to hunt for military and scientific booty, which sometimes came in the form of Nazi scientists, in covert actions such as the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency’s “Operation Paperclip.”

Historically, crackdowns on refugees have led to little more than demonization, breeding division and fear. Since 1882, U.S. presidents have gone through cycles of banning or restricting ethnic groups, only to apologize years later for inflicting harm, according to professor Erika Lee, a historian at the University of Minnesota.

Lee helped start the website Immigration Syllabus, which shies away from political debate and focuses on immigration facts.

“When we close the gates, we look back on those periods with shame,” Lee said in the Star Tribune. “And I do feel that we are on the verge of repeating some of those past mistakes.”

“Refugees entering the U.S. as adults tend to have poor economic outcomes when they first enter, but they improve significantly over time,” the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities report stated. “Use of Medicaid, welfare, and SNAP decrease over time, while employment and income increase.”

After 20 years in the United States, approximately 11 percent still rely on SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Food Stamps, and incomes increase exponentially.

Currently, the present cost of relocating a refugee is $14,384, and over time the refugee receives $86,863 in social insurance costs, but pays taxes of $122,422, which leaves a cost positive net payment by the refugee of $21,195, according to the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.

“By their tenth year in the U.S., refugees are cost-neutral,” the report stated.

The report also noted that refugees who enter the United States before turning 16 graduate college at similar or higher rates than their US-born peers. Two factors help explain poorer results for refugees 15 and older, the first being limited English, and the second that older child refugees are more likely to be unaccompanied by parents or an adult.

While opponents of refugee resettlement twist the narrative to say refugees take jobs away in Fargo, nothing could be further from the truth, James Gartin, president of the Greater Fargo-Moorhead Economic Development Corp., said.

A Regional Workforce Study reported Fargo had 6,500 unfilled jobs in 2005, a number that will grow to 30,000 by 2020.

“This inability to fill jobs has been a major contributor to the slowdown in our local economy, and the refugee resettlement program has an important part to play in addressing this workforce shortage,” Gartin said. “Cutting back on the refugee resettlement program will not benefit the Fargo-Moorhead economy. It will do the opposite.”

For those who feel refugees are prone to become criminals, think again, the Fargo Human Relations Commission reported in January 2017. Immigrants are 1.7 times less likely to become involved in crime than native-born people, according to information from the U.S. Census Bureau and reported on by the American Community Survey.

“Many are threatened by the mere fact that many of us own our homes, businesses, and drive new cars,” Abdullahi said. “It’s possible because we work hard, harder than many imagine. This haunts such people because they have always thought of us as less deserving. If it were up to them, they would not hesitate to throw us in cotton fields and strip away our rights.

“We are a minority and it will remain that way for a long period of time. I strongly believe one day, this negativity is going to go away once people start realizing we are a part of this community, just like they are. I urge former refugees and immigrants to be patient, but speak up when you see acts of racism and discrimination.

“There is nothing to be concerned about at this time, because we are legal residents and citizens and have rights, and rights to be united with our family members, as allowed by the U.S. Constitution.”

Local feces hate crime marks sixth racial incident in 2017

A Fargoan’s car is no longer drivable days after a neighbor reportedly tells him “You cannot be here,” victim said

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – A Somali-American discovered animal feces spread inside his vehicle Monday evening, an incident many believe was a direct threat and a hate crime.

Yusuf Mohamed’s car was locked at Maplewood Apartments, 1010 23rd Street, South Fargo, he said. The culprit broke in through his driver’s side window and spread feces across the dashboard, front and back seats.

Yusuf Mohamed and his vehicle behind him – photo by C.S. Hagen

“This is threat, happened to us,” Mohamed said. “When I opened my car I see animal poo. It was disgusting. I can’t even imagine what happened to my car. I cannot even enter my car until I fix this problem.”

Police responded to the incident, telling him not to enter the vehicle as the feces might pose a health hazard, Mohamed said.

Mohamed found the mess inside his Toyota Corolla at 6pm Monday. The last time he drove the car was the day before, returning home around 10pm, Mohamed said. He believes the incident may stem from a verbal assault he received from a neighbor last Tuesday, September 12.

“You cannot be here,” the neighbor told him, Mohamed said. “You and the other guy, the both of you get out of here. And he telling me you are roadblock to here, but I belong to here. He said to me so many insults, my religion, my color, my language, and he told me you are not belong to here.

Yusuf Mohamed preparing to open his car’s door – photo by C.S. Hagen

“And I told him ‘Fix your language.’ And he did not stop until I go, and I say, ‘Shame on you with your language.’ This is what happened.”

Mohamed arrived in the United States 20 years ago, worked as a factory employee until he was recently injured on the job, and has never been the focus of a hate crime before, he said.

“I have seen things happen to other people in the community, but nothing has happened to me,” Mohamed said. “This is way, way, way too much.”

Police officers told him they had never seen such a crime before, and that the incident is under investigation.

Inside of Yusuf Mohamed’s car – photos provided by Hukun Abdullahi

Although North Dakota does not yet have hate crime legislation, Mohamed is now worried about his own safety.

“Really, I am worried about my safety because the guy found me and followed me when I went down. Now I am worried about my safety. The guy broke into my car, he could break into my apartment and kill me.”

He has also lived in the Maplewood Apartments for six years without incident. He believes that President Donald Trump’s Administration has encouraged haters to vocalize and now physically damage property in the name of white supremacy.

“When the head of the government say bad things about Muslims or insulting other countries, then they do whatever they want,” Mohamed said. “Everything is on the head. If he say bad things, what about the other people? Already they broke the First Amendment, the Second Amendment. The other people can do whatever, because already it’s broke.”

Hukun Abdullahi, member of the Moorhead Human Rights Commission and North Dakota United Against Hate, said hate crimes are being committed in Fargo/Moorhead on a near-daily basis. Mohamed’s incident marks the sixth hate crime in Fargo in 2017, Abdullahi said.

Hate crimes are not about black or white racial issues, but about a protected class versus an unprotected class.

Toyota Corolla and the front door scrapes – photo by C.S. Hagen

“What I see is that this is terrible,” Abdullahi said. “And it’s happening only to one specific community. This is why we need hate crime legislation in North Dakota, and city ordinance too. It’s happening every day. A lot of people this is happening to and they’re not talking about it. We wanted our community to speak out. This is their city. This is their country.

“Whether you kill us, vandalize us, there is nowhere we will go. We came here the way others came here. Fargo is a welcoming city, and there are just a few who are doing this.”

Earlier in 2017, a car belonging to a New American was spray-painted. An assault on a Somali-American on July 2 is being investigated as a possible hate crime by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and was virtually swept under the rug, Barry Nelson, of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, said.

James Patrick Billiot, 32, Fargo, and Justin William Rifanburg, 28, West Fargo, assaulted Shuib Ali, who was moving into an apartment when the attack occurred after racial epithets were said, according to police reports. Nelson said the two men were charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor, were fined $250 for their crime, and the victim was not alerted to the court case.

Later in July, Amber Elizabeth Hensley was filmed while threatening to kill three Somali women in a Walmart parking lot. Video from the incident went viral, and the four people involved later made up, apologizing at the police station.

“Yes we are aware that a break-in took place, and the resident reported to our site manager this morning,” Kurt Bollman, president of Goldmark Property Management, the company that manages Maplewood Apartments, said.

“As in any case of any type of crime, we always ask that the resident contact the police, which he did, and I can tell you, in general, if a resident was determined by the court system of a crime on the property, that resident may, very probably, get evicted, because we don’t tolerate any type of crime, on the property, and especially resident against resident.”

The incident is still under investigation by police, who were also contacted for comment, but did not respond to further requests for information by press time. Bollman wouldn’t answer questions about the tenants possibly involved.

“If a resident has lived with us for six years, there hasn’t been the problem,” Bollman said. 

The North Dakota Human Rights Coalition and Welcoming FM are hosting “A Community Conversation About Race” event at 7pm tonight, Tuesday, September 19.

Haisley Jo Comes Home

After nearly a month of frustration, boyfriend of slain Native American woman retains custody of baby girl

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Twenty-four days after baby Haisley Jo was brutally taken from Savanna Marie LaFontaine-Greywind, the infant girl returned home to her father.

Haisley Jo Greywind-Matheny – photo provided by the family


Ashton Matheny, who according to DNA results released Monday is the father of the nearly one-month-old child, was awarded full legal custody of the baby, according to Krista Andrews, Matheny’s attorney.
The infant girl had been in the custody of Cass County Social Services during the legal process and DNA testing.

“She’s good, she’s a beautiful baby,” Andrews said. “They’re both doing well.”

Haisley Jo was found in the care of Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, in the apartment she shared with William Henry Hoehn, 32, at Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North. Both were arrested five days after Greywind – eight months pregnant with Haisley Jo at the time – went missing. The couple share identical charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to give false information to police.

Andrews, an attorney with Anderson, Bottrell, Sanden & Thompson, practices family law, and said that although authorities took nearly a month before returning Haisley Jo to her family, the case was unique and tragic, and Matheny retained custody immediately following the DNA test.

“Why so long is that social services, the courts, and everybody wanted to make sure they were doing the right thing,” Andrews said. “It probably felt like it took longer than it did.”

Greywind’s body was found wrapped in plastic and duct tape in the Red River, according to police. Although Fargo Police Chief David Todd so far refuses to say that Greywind was the victim of fetal abduction, her death was a “cruel and vicious act of depravity,” according to Todd.

Both suspects are being held in Cass County Jail under a $2 million bond. Crews’ preliminary hearing is scheduled for September 28 at 1:30pm, and Hoehn for October 4 at 9am.

Brooke Lynn Crews and William Henry Hoehn – photo provided by the Fargo Police Department

Little miracles
Neighbors of the Greywind family say Savanna’s spirit is watching over them.

Sweet scents of burning sage waft from the apartment complex. Pictures, candles, and flowers now adorn the complex’s front door and lawn.

Christopher Miranda and girlfriend Rhonda Grimli live on the floor between the Greywind’s and the suspects’ rooms, and discovered a stray boxer and pit bull mix over the Labor Day weekend at the apartment building. The dog was found by a neighbor, who gave the go-ahead to post a picture of the dog on Facebook.

Shortly afterward, the dog’s owner replied, and was reunited with the dog, named Milton.

Milton – the lost and found dog

“I believe it was Savanna who brought him here,” Miranda said. “It felt good, it was the first time really we felt good around here since this happened. The dog made me forget all this stuff that has been going on constantly in my mind.”

To help the Greywind family, a local three-year-old sold more than $1,000 in lemonade for Haisley Jo. A Fargo North High School football game led a “miracle minute in honor of the Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind family,” where cheerleaders collected $1,270 from fans to deposit into the family’s registered bank account at US Bank, under the name of Haisley Jo.

A young man named Skylor Charboneau took first place at a powwow over Labor Day Weekend and donated his winnings to the Greywind family.

An online petition to the City of Fargo to tear down the apartment building in which the Greywind family lived has already been signed by 2,250 petitioners.

Candlelight vigils have been held across the state as concerned citizens placed red light bulbs in their front porch sockets to honor the 22-year-old’s memory. GoodBulb, Inc., which sold the bulbs for $5 apiece, donated $3,125 to the Haisley Jo Donation Fund.

Greywind began her nursing career in Devils Lake, and then transferred to Eventide in Fargo. She had been dating Ashton Matheny since her freshman year in high school, and the couple were looking forward to starting a family.

“All of Savanna’s family and Ashton will miss her tremendously,” Greywind’s obituary stated.

Savanna is survived by her daughter, Haisley Jo, her parents, Norberta and Joe, her brothers and a sister, her grandparents, and nieces and nephews, the obituary reported.

“The pain I feel is like no other,” Norberta said in a public Facebook post. “All my children are my world and the loss of my oldest daughter is very devastating. Just don’t know how to pick myself up from this. So much guilt, anger just every emotion.

“I apologize if I shut out the ones closest to me along with everyone else. I’m sure I will continue to do that. It’s just how I am dealing with this. Just want to thank my Lafontaine family for being there for my family from the beginning and I know you will continue to be there. I love every one of you.

“The Fargo community, Turtle Mountain, Spirit Lake communities, and the entire world have been so supportive.

“My goal is to fight for justice for Savanna. My baby did not deserve this. She was an amazing person, so much love to give and she was the rock of our family, her pregnancy was the most exciting time for us, to lose that and my grandbaby will never know her mother just tears me up.”

Frustration
Many aspects of Greywind’s case have frustrated family and friends. From the police investigation after her disappearance and consequent murder, to Haisley Jo’s absence, to claims of people attempting to profit online from the tragedy, to the apartment Greywind and her boyfriend Matheny planned to rent.

When Greywind paid a deposit of $700 for an apartment across the street from where her family lives, no contract was prepared, family reported.

The property Greywind was planning to rent at 3013 10th Street North is owned by McIntosh Properties, LLC, according to the City of Fargo assessment information, and has an appraised value in 2017 of $572,400. Margaret McIntosh signed the receipt with Greywind in August.

McIntosh Properties, LLC is active and in good standing, and is authorized to invest in, own, and manage real estate, according to the North Dakota Secretary of State. McIntosh is listed as the registered agent of the company.

The property, which has total square footage of 12,288 square feet, is listed as a 12-unit complex with an addition name of Cedarholm, and is legally authorized to be used as an apartment building. Taxes for 2016 of $7,674.46 have been paid, according to the City of Fargo assessment information.

Savanna Greywind recipt for rental property

North Dakota law states that landlords can require a prospective tenant to complete an application, and charge an application fee, which my not be refundable. The fee is typically used to cover the costs of checking a tenant’s references, and an applicant can request a receipt for payment, which Greywind received. Such fees, however, are not considered security deposits.

An agreement between a landlord and tenant is a lease agreement, which can be oral or written. A lease is legally binding on both landlord and tenant and cannot be changed without both parties’ consent.

“For the protection of both the landlord and tenant it is best that the lease agreement be in writing,” the Legal Services of North Dakota stated.

Either party may terminate a lease agreement with at least one calendar month’s written notice. Failure to give proper notice could result in loss of a security deposit.

A landlord also has the right to require a security deposit, which is what Greywind’s family said she paid for. Her boyfriend’s name was not included in the receipt as he was currently unemployed.  Any security deposit must be returned to the tenant at the end of a lease within 30 days, or the tenant given a written accounting as to why the deposit was not returned. Disagreements are usually taken to Small Claims Court.

The Greywind family and supporters believe a special case should be made for Savanna Greywind, however, and the deposit should be returned.

McIntosh refused to answer questions regarding the situation, and hung up the telephone.

Although police no longer consider what was thought to be a crime scene on a farmstead in Clay County, Minnesota a place of former interest in connection to Greywind’s murder, they’re still asking the public for information. The police tip lines number has changed to (701) 241-5777.

“Old Man With A Sign” Takes Fargo By Surprise

Second tour for elderly online personality protesting President Trump brings “The Sign” to Downtown Fargo while traveling the nation

By C.S. Hagen
Fargo – On his worst day protesting Donald Trump’s Administration, Gale McCray received nine one-finger salutes. Thirty minutes on Fargo’s Main Avenue and Second Street intersection, the white-haired Texan received three.

McCray and his double-layered cardboard sign started becoming an Internet sensation during his first trip to Washington D.C. He frequently refers to “The Sign” as a proper noun, almost like his friend or mischievous traveling companion sneaking a photo opportunity beside Trump memorabilia vendors, music festival stages, or religious billboards. Written in black marker on white background, McCray, 74, and his eight-month-old slightly-battered sign, have attracted threats and fans across the nation.

“Trump. That boy don’t act right,” the sign reads. The flip side reads “Resist,” and has dozens of signatures.

The saying has Southern roots, and means something just isn’t quite right. Usually, such a phrase as “that boy don’t act right,” is followed up with “God bless him,” McCray said.

“Old man with a sign” comes to Fargo – photo by C.S. Hagen

McCray can talk a mile a minute, but when he’s on the sidewalk, he lets The Sign do his talking. As a trusted companion, The Sign occasionally needs to “stretch out and relax” while he sips a brevé latté with one Splenda. Even then, The Sign – placed carefully along a nearby fence – can’t escape the curses or one-finger salutes. Sometimes, The Sign leads him into potential trouble.

Like the time McCray stumbled onto a Westboro Baptist church compound in Kansas.

“The Sign told me to photo bomb these Westboro Baptist crazies, so I did,” McCray said in a Facebook post. His Facebook page has more than 2,400 followers.

His mission began at an intersection in Fort Worth, Texas, and he’s “been riding the wave ever since.” He grew tired of contacting his state’s representative fruitlessly.

“I’m kind of a ham,” McCray said. “I just come out here with a sign. I didn’t organize this or plan this, I just stood out on the interstate in Fort Worth and social media took over.”

While on the road, McCray eats at Cracker Barrels, Dairy Queens, Starbucks, and Burger Kings. He stays with friends, or sleeps in his car. To help fund on-the-road survival, a friend set up a GoFundMe account which raised $2,000, and he sells t-shirts. He wings most of his destinations, and is wondering after a trip west to Bismarck if he might not drive to Mississippi.

He doesn’t protest every day, and has no idea when he’s going to stop. Recently, in Des Moines, Iowa, he lost a tooth and plans to travel to Mexico to get it fixed.

On his Facebook page entitled “Old man with a sign,” he encourages followers to find their own ways to resist the current administration.

“Posting on Facebook that Trump is a ______, is not resisting,” McCray said in an August 16 Facebook post. “We must decide, do we turn away, or do we take a stand against neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalism, and hate? There is a darkness rising now, a rot, a malignant, spreading poison. We must be careful, but loudly and forcefully reject this nightmare of rising domestic terrorism. We cannot let this monster continue to grow.

“Congress should censure the President, now. Today.”

When people ask him what is wrong with the Presidential administration, his answer unswervingly remains the same.

“If I have to tell you, you will never understand.”

Some people call him a hero, a description McCray doesn’t know how to mentally wrestle. Like his sign, he also has had his share of hardship. After 21 years working as a mailman McCray fell into drugs, lost his wife. He managed to quit, however, and in his 40s got a degree and ended up working as a therapist for addict rehabilitation, he said.

The best aspect about his trips around the country are the people. When passersby see his sign, “Some people just break out laughing, and that’s the greatest thing,” McCray said.

Most drivers passing by McCray while he stood in the late summer heat honked and waved. When the third person gave him the middle finger, he chuckled good-naturedly.

The worst place he visited was Springfield, Illinois, but he remembers a woman in Washington D.C., in a wheelchair, struggling to climb the stairs to the Lincoln Memorial. She took one look at The Sign, and spat venom.

“You’re despicable,” the elderly woman told him.

“It’s just sad,” McCray said. “All she knew about me is me and this sign. To have that much hate.” McCray shook his head, then leapt back into action, holding The Sign up for a couple in a pickup truck to study. They remained quiet, and McCray stood back.

“Sometimes, there’s no way to tell,” McCray said. “One time there was this big old man barreling toward me and when he reached me he just shook my hand and thanked me.”

McCray’s favorite spots are medians. He can flash The Sign to both lines of traffic. In Fargo, he stood on the southwest side of Main Avenue during rush hour, and said although he would never move to Fargo, he loves what the city has done to its downtown area.

McCray will quit protesting when Trump is out of office, he said. He’s not hoping for a miracle, though.

“I don’t get into hope,” McCray said. “We’re not going away. I’m not here to change anyone, that would be grandiose on my part. I’m here just to let people know we’re here, and we are not going away.”

 

Savanna’s 24 Steps

“A Cruel And Vicious Act Of Depravity”

A frantic week of searching for a pregnant 22-year-old Native American woman ends in tragedy, suspects arrested, and a city is hurting

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – It’s a short distance from the Greywind family’s basement apartment to the third floor, 24 steps, to be exact. Apartment number five is boarded up tight.  Neighbors, who were allowed to move back in Sunday, are scared, and don’t want to speak about the suspects sitting in Cass County Jail, now charged with conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, and false information.

An even shorter route leads to the rear door and a parking lot. From the outside appearance, the building is clean, white washed; no palpable evil emanates from apartment number five. The suspects do not resemble monsters. They’re people anyone could pass on any street and at any time.

The apartment complex from which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind went missing from – photo by C.S. Hagen

Five days after Savanna Marie Lafontaine-Greywind disappeared on August 19, Fargo Police arrested Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, of Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North, Fargo, and believe they have the right suspects.

“By no means is this case closed, we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Fargo Police Lieutenant Jason Nelson said. “But there is no indication that there are other suspects involved.”

Apartment #5, the room to which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind went before her disappearance – photo by C.S. Hagen

Before the weekend, both were charged with class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and now after Greywind’s body was found, wrapped tightly in plastic and duct tape, snagged by a tree in the middle of the Red River, the suspects face additional charges of conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to give false information.

At the same time, police responded to the report of a body in the river, volunteer searchers also discovered strange evidence of a possible crime that may be related to Greywind’s murder  in an abandoned farmhouse off 90th Avenue Northwest in Clay County.

“A conspiracy requires an agreement with one or others to do things which are otherwise unlawful, and someone take s an overt act in furtherance of that conspiracy,”  Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said.

The backdoor, easily accessible from apartment #5 – photo by C.S. Hagen

Pending the results of an autopsy from Ramsey County’s Medical Examiner’s Office in Minnesota, police would not say if Greywind’s death is being investigated as a fetus abduction, but Greywind was killed, and her baby girl, named Haisley Jo, was found 24 steps away from where her mother once lived.  

“As the chief, I speak on behalf of the men and women of the Fargo Police Department, and I tell you are hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of this young lady,” Fargo Police Chief David Todd said. “As law enforcement, through our investigative efforts we will continue to pursue justice for Savanna. Savanna was the victim of a cruel and vicious act of depravity.”

Greywind’s body was found Sunday afternoon by kayakers in the Red River in Clay County, Minnesota, and she disappeared from Fargo in North Dakota. A crime that crosses state lines frequently becomes a federal case, which may present jurisdictional issues.

Front door of the apartment building from which Savanna Lafontaine-Greywinf disappeared – photo by C.S. Hagen

“It’s premature for me to go into that right now,” Burdick said. “We need to weigh the facts, and we feel we have appropriate charges to move forward right now in Cass County in state court.”

North Dakota banned the death penalty in 1976, but the federal government does employ capital punishment for federal offenses such as kidnapping leading to death.

Although many case facts are still unknown, what is clear is that Greywind, 22, and eight months pregnant, left her apartment on the first floor to model a dress for Crews at approximately 1:30 p.m. on August 19, according to Nelson. An hour went by, and her 16-year-old brother texted her for a ride to work. Greywind’s father, Joe, went upstairs at some point, but no one answered the door, Nelson confirmed.

Greywind’s mother, Norberta, drove her son to work at around 2:40 p.m., then returned, and by approximately 4 o’clock climbed the 24 steps to apartment number five and knocked. Crews answered the door and told Norberta that her daughter was no longer there.

Later that night, family reported Greywind missing. The next day missing persons fliers were posted around town, and by Wednesday the family announced a $7,000 reward for information leading to Greywind’s discovery.  Three consent searches were made by police of the apartment complex, but no information was forthcoming until Thursday, when police obtained a forensic warrant and discovered a healthy newborn infant inside apartment number five with Crews.

Police believe the infant is Greywind’s baby girl, and are waiting on DNA test results.

Fargo Police, West Fargo, Moorhead Police, Cass and Clay County sheriff’s departments, North Dakota’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, are involved with the investigation. Luminescent-shirted volunteers have helped with with searches totaling more than 150 tips, and by Sunday combed more than 35 areas of interest. Since police became involved, a total of 35 detectives, four sergeants, two lieutenants, cadaver dogs, K-9s, watercraft, aircraft, and a deputy chief have been working around the clock on this investigation, Fargo Police Chief David Todd said.

The Fargo Police Department also teamed up with Minnesota K-9 Search Rescue & Tracking handler Paul Matheson with dogs specially trained in locating placentas to search multiple points of interest, including dumpsters, vacant fields, freshly dug-up earth, and construction sites, police reported.  

The activity early Sunday morning brought Norberta and Joe Greywind from the hotel where they were staying. The couple appeared nervous, quickly walking toward where four police vehicles and a fire truck were parked along the Red River. They stopped, waiting for any word, but law enforcement officials were busy.

They spoke of anger toward their former neighbor, frustration with police who they said initially suspected them and Greywind’s boyfriend and father of the baby girl, Ashton Matheny, of being involved in their daughter’s disappearance for two days after she was reported missing.

“The whole family was looking forward to the birth of her baby, my first grandchild,” Norberta said. In the darkness, 3:30 in the morning, her voice choked as she watched police drag a pontoon into the Red River.

Federal agents are still watching them, Joe said.

“We are a tight knit family,” Joe said. The Greywinds and Matheny are members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas Tribe. “It’s just us, and that’s just the way it is.”

Norberta said she was always wary of Crews, and didn’t like the way she looked at her daughter. She mentioned a public Facebook post Crews posted on July 22, 2016, of a Native American woman breastfeeding a baby with two other infants on her lap, which disgusted her.

“And to think of what my daughter might have gone through?” Norberta said.

Later that day, more than 400 people showed up for Fargo’s Native American Commission annual picnic, which after approval from Greywind’s family also became a march honoring Savanna to Veteran’s Memorial Bridge.

All attendees were smudged with burning sage after lunch.

“This is community spiritual support,” Willard Yellowbird, cultural planner for the City of Fargo, said. “We march as one voice, one sound, one spirit, one community, regardless of tribe, race, or creed. Our goal is to bring Savanna home.”

Behind him, four men, including Zebediah Gartner, 20, an Anishinaabe from Fargo, sang a Native American song while beating a drum. Their voices rose and fell, synchronized drumbeats softened while Gartner drumstick rose high, then crashed into the soft leather. Dozens ate barbecue and hamburgers from plastic plates, while luminescent green-shirted search volunteers gathered for the upcoming meeting.

“All this energy is for people who are feeling sad, we have all this positive energy and this need that everybody has to feel this goodness now, at this time, native and non-native,” Yellowbird said.

In a statement Monday, Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney offered appreciation to everyone involved in the case, and observed a moment of silence at Monday’s City Commission meeting.

“I would like to acknowledge the profound sadness being felt within our metro area over the loss of Fargo resident Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind,” Mahoney said. “Savanna was taken from this community far too soon and in an utterly reprehensible manner.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Savanna.  

“It is in these moments that we fully appreciate the tight bond uniting our community during times of crisis and distress.  As your Mayor, I’ve been very moved by the outpouring of support shown during the search efforts.  The willingness of our people to volunteer and help others is appreciated and uplifting.  Please remember that instances like this do not define Fargo; Fargo is instead defined by our people’s incredible spirit of resilience and their collective acts of support exhibited in the aftermath of difficult circumstances.”

Greywind’s family and friends watching while police search forest early Sunday morning along Red River banks in Moorhead, Minnesota – photo by C.S. Hagen

Arraignment
Hoehn, pronounced Hayne, entered the television screen dressed from neck to ankles in orange on Monday afternoon. Hands folded in front of him, he remained emotionless when the charges were read against him.

He was charged with class AA felony of conspiracy to murder Greywind with Crews, a crime punishable up to life imprisonment without parole, class A felony conspiracy to kidnap the infant child of Greywind with Crews, punishable up to 20 years in jail and a $20,000 fine, and then a class A misdemeanor conspiracy to mislead the police investigation punishable up to one year in jail and up to a $3,000 fine.

Tanya Martinez of the Cass County State’s Attorney’s Office asked Hoehn if he understood the charges.

“Yes, I do,” Hoehn said.

“Because two of the these charges are felonies, we will not take pleas from you today,” the judge said. “Rather this matter will be set for a preliminary hearing on October 4, at 9 in the morning.”

William Henry Hoehn in prison orange – photo by C.S. Hagen

Hoehn is unemployed, and qualified for a public defender, fees for which he may be responsible for paying back if proven guilty. He has a prior criminal record including child abuse in 2012, possession of drug paraphernalia in 2011, and a simple assault domestic violence charge Hoehn pled guilty to in 2016.

“Mister Hoehn was uncooperative and in fact misled the investigation,” Martinez said. “In addition the state has information that there were Internet searches that would lead a reasonable person to believe they were looking at staying somewhere else. They were searching places like Travelocity… the state is asking for $2 million cash bail only.”

“Two million dollar cash only is set at such a high level to be unattainable,” Hoehn said, straightening up for the first time. “Um, I would request that we do something along the lines that we be able to use a bail allotment, if that is a possibility. I don’t know if that is a possibility to me, but I know that two million is unattainable for any regular person. That is not a reasonable bail.”

The judge agreed with the state’s attorney, setting bail at $2 million cash only.

Crews looked at home in her orange pajama suit, keeping her head bowed most of the time while Martinez read the same charges. If the case is not tried in a federal court, Crews faces more than life imprisonment, and also received a $2 million bail.

Brooke Lynn Crews at arraignment – photo by C.S. Hagen

Because Crews also has a criminal history, bad checks in the early 2000s, and an assault in Minnesota that was later dismissed, the state asked for the same bail. “There were efforts to look for and places to take flight,” Martinez said. “We are recommending for two million dollars, cash only.”

Crews understood and did not attempt a discussion. Crews also qualified for a public defender, and her preliminary hearing was set for September 28, at 1:30 p.m.

Red lights
Family and friends are asking the City of Fargo to illuminate their front porches with red lights this week.

As a member of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, Ruth Buffalo attended the arraignment hearing, and asked for people to honor Greywind and remember missing and murdered indigenous women every year.

She wants the case to be tried in a federal court, as all registered Native Americans belong to a sovereign nation.

“One of three Native American women go missing every year,” Buffalo said, pointing to friends standing nearby. “And those statistics are not accurate because a part of the cases go unreported. If and when we go missing, it should go straight to federal, not the state.”

“I’m here as an indigenous person and mother supporting another indigenous person,” Amanda Vivier, also of the Turtle Mountain Tribe, said.

Family who attended the arraignment declined to speak.

Andrew Varvel, from Bismarck, said the Greywind’s case feels surreal, and not only because of the mystery behind Greywind’s death.  

“Here, we have the State Historical Society hosting a stilted ‘cultural event’ to ‘foster healing’ while Indians throughout the Upper Midwest are converging on Fargo in a desperate search for Savanna,” Varbel said on Sunday, before Greywind’s body was found. “One side seeks cultural understanding, while the other side is frantically searching for a woman who is probably dead by now.”

Varvel also hopes the case goes to a federal court. “Regardless of what you think of the death penalty, if federal prosecutors don’t seek the death penalty in this case, the racial bias in this region becomes glaringly obvious.”

Search volunteers Stephanie Walters, Brian Weidener, and Tonya Simonson, also stood outside the courthouse after the arraignment, expressing disdain that the two suspects were given bail at all.

“If it was my choice, they would not be getting a bond,” Walters said. She helped search Highland Park, County Road 22, and County Road 31, Memorial Cemetery and other places over the weekend.

Walter was still searching when she heard the news Greywind’s body had been found.

“I could just feel my heart break,” Walter said. “I was scared, shocked, relieved. I was like, oh my gosh, we were so close to her.”

Friends and family are asking Fargoans to display red light bulbs in front porches or landings, Buffalo said. If not red light bulbs, then a red dress by the front door is also acceptable.

“Red light bulbs to show honor to Savanna and all missing indigenous women,” Buffalo said.

GoodBulb, at 4211 12th Avenue North, Fargo, is selling red light bulbs all week, and will be contributing all proceeds to the family. Tom Enright will be representing his company Monday night starting at 8:30 at Mickelson Field to sell the bulbs during a candlelight vigil for Savanna.

“We hope to sell 1,000 of them this week,” Enright said.

Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick at press conference – photo by C.S. Hagen

Fetal abductions
Whispers around the city have filtered across the state, even to national media outlets that Greywind was the victim of a fetal abduction.

From 1974 until 2011 there have been at least 22 fetal abductions, attempted fetal abductions, or alleged fetal abductions in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

According to a 2012 masters of criminology case study by Kerry Arquette for Regis University,  research into the issue is difficult, as fetal abductions are not systematically reported at local, state, or at the federal levels.

The first recorded case of fetal abduction took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1974 when Winifred Ransom killed a pregnant mother of three using a handgun and a butcher knife to perform a Caesarian section on the victim. When the pregnant woman, Margaret Sweeney, who was eight months pregnant at the time, regained consciousness during the operation, Ransom fired two shots into her head, and then buried the dead woman beneath the floorboards of her kitchen shed, according to the Delaware County Daily Times. The baby girl survived, and was being raised by relatives.

Ransom was acquitted on grounds of insanity, committed to a mental hospital, and then released after 20 months.

A second case in Albuquerque, New Mexico followed in 1987, when Cindy Lyn Ray was kidnapped outside a prenatal clinic at Kirkland Air Force Base. Darci Pierce, who was 19 at the time, strangled Ray and used her car keys to open the pregnant woman’s womb, snatching the unharmed fetus, according to police reports. The baby survived.

Pierce was found guilty-but-mentally-ill of first degree murder and was sentenced to a life in prison.

A sharp increase in fetal abductions were reported in 1995 until 2011 with 19 fetal abductions or attempted fetal abductions.

Psychologists state that baby stealers are extreme examples of “maternal instinct run amok,” who have deep psychological desires, a fragile sense of self esteem, a disturbed family background, and dependency on others, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Ashton Matheny and Savanna Lafontaine-Greywind picture posted on August 25, 2017 – Facebook

Haisley Jo
Greywind’s baby, who was found healthy and taken to a Sanford Hospital on August 24, is named Haisley Jo, and her name is the only US Bank official account people can donate to help the Greywind family. The family is not using or accepting any GoFundMe account donations.

Haisley Jo is currently under the protection of the Cass County Social Services. Calls were made for comment on the child’s condition, and when the infant may be given back to family, but no responses were received.

The official account’s name at the US Bank for donations is under Haisley Jo, and was coordinated with the Sacred Journey Lodge, a nonprofit organization, according to Breyanne Lafontaine-Enno.

“Thank you everyone who helped bring my sweet cousin Savanna home,” Lafontaine-Enno said. “Please respect that we are grieving… Our family appreciates all the love and support we continue to receive.”

Krissy Weber, listed from Fargo, is one of the people who set up a fake GoFundMe account, and was called out by netizens.

“This is not an account from the family,” a woman named Heather Fischer wrote in the comments section. “This is fake do not donate to this account. The family will have an account set up at US Bank in Savanna’s daughter’s name. You should be ashamed of yourself. This family has been through so much and now as do [to] deal with people like you.”

Others reported Weber’s GoFundMe as being a fake account. No donations have been made as of early Monday morning.

Another fake GoFundMe account was set up by Anna Miller Christenson, from Walcott, and raised $50 of a total goal of $2,000, and by Monday was no longer accepting donations.

Christenson later responded by saying she had good intentions, and was disheartened by the accusation.

Downstairs of the apartment, laundry room, also has back door access – photo by C.S. Hagen

 

Savanna’s Body Found Near Harwood

Eight days after a 22-year-old pregnant woman disappeared from a Fargo apartment, her body was found near Harwood

By C.S. Hagen
HARWOOD
– The body of Savanna Marie Lafontaine-Greywind was found near the Red River early Sunday evening by law enforcement. 

At 8:20 p.m. her body was found, and at 9:20 p.m. the body was identified, according to Fargo Police Chief David Todd. Greywind’s body will be brought to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner. Her family has been notified, Todd said.

Rural 90th Avenue Northwest was blocked off in Cass County and Clay County, making travel impossible along the road while police conducted their investigation. 

Greywind went missing eight days ago on August 19, and she was eight months pregnant when she went upstairs to model a dress for neighbor, Brooke Lynn Crews, in Apartment 5, 2825 Ninth Street North, Fargo. 

Three consent searches were made by police of the apartment complex in which Greywind’s family lived, but no information was forthcoming until Thursday, when police obtained a forensic warrant and discovered a healthy newborn infant inside apartment number five with Crews. 

Police believe the infant is Greywind’s baby girl, and are waiting on DNA test results.

Five days after Greywind disappeared, Fargo Police arrested Crews, 38, and William Henry Hoehn, 32, and say they believe they have the right suspects. Both were charged with Class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping by police. 

The Fargo Police Department reported receiving more than 150 tips during the week of investigation, and combed more than 35 areas of interest. Since police became involved, a total of 35 detectives, four sergeants, two lieutenants, cadaver dogs, K-9s, watercraft, aircraft, and a deputy chief have been working around the clock on this investigation, Todd said.

Police combed a cornfield and other areas in Dilworth, Moorhead, along the Red River banks, and other areas connected to suspects’ GPS information, while green-shirted volunteers led by Belcourt Rural Fire Department fanned out across multiple points of interest near Trollwood Park over the weekend. 

More than 400 people showed up for Fargo’s Native American Commission annual picnic, which after approval from Greywind’s family also became a march to Veteran’s Memorial Bridge on Saturday afternoon. 

No further information is available at this time. This is a breaking news story and updates will be posted when received.

Search for Savanna Continues

Two arrested, newborn infant found in Fargo apartment, volunteers flock to Trollwood Park to help search for missing Fargo woman

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Two Fargo residents were arrested Thursday afternoon in relation to the disappearance of Savanna Marie Greywind, but no charges have been filed by the Cass County State’s Attorney yet.

One of the suspects was found with a newborn infant in the apartment upstairs to where Greywind and family lived. Greywind, 22, was nearly eight months pregnant at the time of her disappearance last weekend, and police believe the baby is Greywind’s.

“The infant was alive and was immediately taken to a medical facility,” Todd said. “Detective interviews with the suspects indicate the baby girl is Savanna’s baby. We are doing DNA testing to confirm the identity of the baby, however, testing results can take several days.”

Police arrested 38 year-old Brooke Lynn Crews, who lived at Apartment 5, 2825 9th Street North, and arrested 32 year-old William Henry Hoehn at a traffic stop. They both lived at the North Fargo apartment, and they were charged by police with Class A felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

Brooke Lynn Crews and William Henry Hoehn – photo provided by the Fargo Police Department

Hoehn pled guilty of child neglect or abuse in Grand Forks County in 2012, according to North Dakota Supreme Courts Register of Actions. He was put on probation and ordered to attend psychological and domestic violence evaluations and parenting classes.

“We think we have the right people,” Fargo Police Chief David Todd said. “We’ve dedicated a lot of attention to this case, but until Wednesday, we had not established a criminal nexus to this case that would allow us to obtain warrants for residents and electronic devices.”

Since Greywind was reported missing last weekend, Fargo police, state and federal law enforcement agencies, have conducted constant surveillance, Todd said, investigating theories that Greywind was being held against her will, or that her unborn child had been removed or induced and was possibly alive.

In total, 35 detectives, four sergeants, two lieutenants, cadaver dogs, K-9s, watercraft, aircraft, and a deputy chief have been working around the clock on this investigation, Todd said.  

“Therefore, we were careful with what we were saying or releasing in fear that a suspect or suspects may panic and dispose of them in order to get rid of incriminating evidence,” Todd said.

Search volunteers line up to write down names – photo by C.S. Hagen

Before making the arrests, police performed three consent searches on the suspects’ apartment. The first search was allowed by Crews, and police did not find Savanna. Police went back later and did a second consent search, and still did not discover anything. A third search was conducted by a detective, which also came up empty.

“There is the possibility that the infant was not in the apartment, and may have been moved to a different location,” Todd said.

After a fourth complete forensics search was conducted on Thursday after warrants were obtained, police discovered the baby girl.

Cass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick said his office has not officially filed charges against Hoehn and Crews yet.

Tarita Silk, Savanna Greywind’s aunt, talks to volunteers – photo by C.S. Hagen

“There are two people who are in jail right now, and we have been, in my office, in close communication with the police department on this matter,” Burdick said. “We are reviewing all the information that is available right now and determining what is appropriate as charges. At this point we have not filed any charges.”

Suspects may be held up to 48 hours without official charges being filed, Burdick said, which in this case will expire during the weekend.

“What we do in those situations is we obtain through the jail information from the arresting agency why they’re arrested and brought to jail,” Burdick said. “And that information is provided to the judge over the weekend, and then the judge will make a probable cause determination.

“The idea is to make sure within 48 hours a neutral magistrate has had an opportunity to determine whether it is appropriate for that person to be detained.”

Six days after Greywind disappeared, she remains missing, and the suspects are refusing to speak.  

“In the interviews when it comes to the topic of what happened to Savanna, neither Hoehn or Crews will cooperate with our investigation,” Todd said. “Both Hoehn and Crews have invoked their right to counsel and refuse to answer any more questions.”

“We don’t know what the condition of her well being is, I wish we did,” Todd said. “We’re exploring every option, chasing down every lead.”

One lead led to the old Trollwood Park Friday afternoon, where more than 85 people gathered to begin searching areas south of the park. Belcourt Rural Fire Department Chief Larry Mason and chaplain MJ Krogh supervised the search, sectioning off areas surrounded the nearby golf course and trailer park.

“We will continue until we have something,” Krogh said.

Some volunteers organized snacks and water bottles while others listed names and phone numbers on sheets of paper.

Belcourt Fire Chief Larry Mason begins designating search quadrants – photo by C.S. Hagen

Just before setting off, Mason warned everyone to be careful of poison ivy, and gave out additional instructions including not to touch anything suspect, but to take a picture, and report. He handed out maps, sectioning out search quadrants.

“This is the main area right here that they want us to search,” Mason said.

Tarita Silk, Greywind’s aunt, drove up from Rapid City, South Dakota yesterday. She swayed a baby back and forth while giving encouragement to the volunteers.

“I want to thank everyone who is helping, it really means alot to us,” Silk said. “Let’s find Savanna and bring her home.”

“Our number one goal here and all of our dedicated resources are going to find Savanna and bring her home hopefully safely,” Todd said.

 

Police are asking for the public’s help throughout the city to check garages, backyards, vacant apartments, and dumpsters, Todd said.

Authorities are also looking for a brownish 1996 Grand Jeep Cherokee with a Minnesota license plate number 876 EPR. Any information can be called into the police tip line at (701) 235-7335.

Brownish 1996 Grand Jeep Cherokee with a Minnesota license plate number 876 EPR

 

Former Drayton Foods Employee Claims She was Fired Unfairly, Sexually Harassed After Injuries

New American vows to take case to court, saying company abuses its immigrant workers

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO
– A former Drayton Foods, LLC employee filed a complaint against the frozen pizza and bread dough company claiming she was fired unjustly and sexually harassed after repeated injuries.

Halima Kwcrwb holds up her Drayton work tag – photo by C.S. Hagen

Halima Kwcrwb, 49, of Fargo, who worked for Drayton Foods, LLC for five years, claimed she was hurt twice while on the job, and filed twice for workers’ compensation with North Dakota Workforce Safety & Insurance, but was denied for wage loss benefits.

Similar petitions for assistance to Job Service North Dakota were also denied, because doctors said she was fit for general work, employment paperwork Kwcrwb provided stated.

Drayton Foods, LLC personnel records given by Kwcrwb indicate she quit, citing “self resignation due to job abandonment,” after a Last Chance Agreement was signed, and she had two consecutive no shows on December 15 and December 16, 2016.

“She was told by the doctor she was able to work,” company personnel paperwork stated. “Did not show up.”

“I was fired,” Kwcrwb said. Her first injury, which occurred after boxes of breadsticks fell on her left arm in August 2016, never truly healed, she said, and disagreements between company-appointed doctors and a doctor she saw on her own dime differ. She worked as a line operator and was paid $10.30 an hour.

“I loved my job, but my first injury happened in August, and I work with broken arm,” Kwcrwb said. “Even doctor gave me restriction to go to work, which I did. My world turned upside down when I was injured, not once, but twice at this company.”

The pain after her first injury became intolerable, but she said she continued to work as best she could with her arm in a sling. Hospital reports she provided report her arm was sprained. Some days the pain, which shot into her back and neck, was too much for her to go to work.

According to company paperwork provided by Kwcrwb, she was warned and then signed a Last Chance Agreement on October 25, 2016. Kwcrwb, who is originally from Sudan, speaks limited English, and has difficulty reading and writing. She said she did not understand what she signed, and that company personnel tricked her.

“You don’t sign it we’re sending you home,” Kwcrwb said.

Hospital records provided by Kwcrwb from September 8, 2016 reveal she was still in pain, but could return to general work and be “active as tolerated.”

Three months later on December 13, 2016, around 9:45 p.m., Kwcrwb fell while climbing a step at work, injuring her back and pelvic region. She said she lay flat, bleeding from a cut she received on her hip on the company floor for three hours before being taken to the emergency room.

Hospital records provided by Kwcrwb show that Kwcrwb was later prescribed Hydrocodone-Acetaminophen, a highly addictive pain reliever, Ondansetron, a nausea preventative medicine, Prednisone, an anti-inflammation drug, and Topiramate, which helps prevent seizures, among other medicines and heat wraps.

Paperwork follow up examinations on December 15 and December 20, 2016, indicate Kwcrwb was to be put on restricted duty, limiting her movement and workload to lifting 10 pounds or less, due to a contusion to her lower back and pelvis.

Kwcrwb continued therapy until just before the New Years, according to hospital records provided by Kwcrwb.

Additional mistreatment included managerial staff allegedly asking her to trade sexual favors for lighter workload while recuperating, Kwcrwb claimed. Both times she was injured managerial staff told her to come back to work, and she was fired after her second injury on January 6, which she also claimed was a direct result of the first mishap.

“The manager asked if I would have boom-boom with him, or sex, and he would give me an easy job,” Kwcrwb said. “And I said, ‘I will never have sex with you.’”

“This accident was a direct result of not being able to properly perform my job due to my previous injury,” Kwcrwb said. “This company knows how to manipulate everything to find you at fault. When my doctor recommended further restrictions, my fear of losing my job was realized. Drayton wanted me to come back to work the day after being released from an overnight stay at the hospital following my second injury. When I refused, they told me I was fired.”

“There is a claim and it is open and active,” Clare Carlson, deputy director of WSI, or the North Dakota Workforce Safety & Insurance, said.

North Dakota Workforce Safety & Insurance is an employer financed insurance state fund covering workplace injuries and deaths, and is the sole provider and administrator of workers’ compensation including wage loss and medical benefits for injuries in the state.

Drayton Foods, LLC is listed as a foreign limited liability company in good standing registered in Delaware in December 1995, according to the North Dakota Secretary of State. The company has approximately 220 employees, according to business directory Buzzfile. 

Schwan’s Co. acquired Drayton Foods, LLC in July in order to increase its US pizza market capabilities, according to media outlet Food Business News. Drayton Foods, LLC has estimated annual revenue of $ 10 million, and primarily makes pizza crusts, dough balls, breadsticks, and dinner rolls, according to media outlet The Business Journals.

Kwcrwb is the mother of eight children, five of whom are either in college or have joined the Army. Today, she is a citizen of the United States – a New American – after escaping a war zone in her homeland nearly two decades ago. She said she never had issues at the company before, and rarely took a day off, working seven days a week while at Drayton Foods, LLC.

After a company manager suggested trading sex for a lighter workload, friends interceded with the manager on her behalf, and she was offered a raise, which she didn’t take, Kwcrwb said. Drayton Foods, LLC hired Kwcrwb on September 26, 2011, according to employment paperwork provided by Kwcrwb.

Kwcrwb made several reports to the company’s human resources department, but nothing was done, she said.

“In this company 90 percent of the employees are New Americans, most of whom cannot speak or write English well, which makes it difficult for them to understand the regulations. Drayton Foods takes advantage of this and abuses their employees.”

A coworker who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he approached the manager after Kwcrwb told him what happened. “She told me that the manager came to her and say, ‘Hey if you need an easy job at least you can sleep with me,’” the coworker said.

“I said ‘Okay, calm down,’ and I went to talk to the manager, but didn’t talk to the president.”  The manager denied the accusation, the coworker said. “He said he never did that to her. Sometimes they joke around with women, and if you are one of the employees and you do that you can be terminated immediately.”

The coworker also believes Kwcrwb was fired unfairly, adding that now she is having a difficult time paying bills.

“And that’s how they’ve been doing, as long as you’re injured they don’t consider you employed to them, you are nothing to them,” the coworker, who is from Moorhead, said.

In addition to her claims of being unjustly fired and sexually harassed, she said a company manager tried to intimidate her into working her normal job along as a line operator.

“He told me since I was hurt I would not last three days at the company,” Kwcrwb said. “He told me that no one would do anything about it because this is North Dakota law. He told me Job Service, WSI, and North Dakota labor enforcement would never do anything about it.”

Now, Kwcrwb said she is in danger of losing her home.

“I’m sharing my story now, because I know there are many others who have gone through what I’ve gone through,” Kwcrwb said. “I know my rights have been violated. I will take this case to court for everything Drayton has put me through.”

Halima Kwcrwb shuffles through a mound of paperwork regarding her employment and injuries – photo by C.S. Hagen

According to laws stipulated in the North Dakota Century Code, all employers, with limited exceptions, must cover workers – full-time, part-time, seasonal, or occasional – against injuries with WSI. Failure to comply could result in penalties and workers can sue an uninsured employer for damages caused. General liability, health, and accident insurance are not substitutes for workers’ compensation insurance, and employers must file applications with the WSI.

When an employer hires in the Peace Garden State, however, a bargain is legally struck with the employee, stipulating that an employee cannot sue an employer for injuries incurred on the job if the company has filed with WSI, a Fargo attorney said.

If, however, an employee is fired because the employer discovered he or she was seeking workers’ compensation benefits, such actions would be illegal and could be considered improper retaliation, the attorney said.

Additionally, if someone is hurt at work, an employer cannot simply fire the employee, rather the employer must interact with the employee in good faith, allowing the employee to maintain employment.

Multiple attempts to contact Drayton Foods, LLC management were made, but no one returned telephone calls for a response to the allegations.

“This Is A Brave Space”

Local white-rights activist claims Charlottesville rally was a trap, dozens gathered locally to remember a victim and renounce hate

By. C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Pete Tefft woke up Saturday morning in Charlottesville, Virginia, eager to march for what he believed in: white rights. The racist hors d’oeuvres from the night before – a torch lit march to the Confederacy’s top general Robert E Lee’s statue – was too small a sampling, and he wanted more.

Sure, fights had broken out Friday night. While being filmed by a Unicorn Riot crew he was challenged, and a like-minded person nearby clobbered the journalist.

Pete Tefft in Charlottesville Unit the Right Rally – Unicorn Riot screenshot of video

“Cite a source for what you’re saying about white people being murdered in South Africa,” the journalist said.

“Cite a source?” Tefft said. “On the Internet.”

“That’s a f*cking rabbit hole,” a bystander yelled, and then punched the journalist.

“Hard to get excited about walking into a war zone,” Tefft said. “Everyone needs to do their duty though. I’m still in shock from seeing our guys beaten, maced, and pelted with projectiles while the police stood by and did nothing.”

Saturday night at 8:29, live updates published by the Daily Stormer, a white nationalist platform featuring the Summer of Hate Edition, included congratulatory messages.

“To those of you in Charlottesville, go out and enjoy yourselves,” the update stated. “If you’re at a bar in a group, random girls will want to have sex with you. Because you’re the bad boys. The ultimate enemy of the state. Every girl on the planet wants your d*ck now.

“And to everyone, know this: we are now at war.”

The altercation Friday night didn’t leave Tefft fazed, nor did the violence the following day alter his conviction about white rights.

“The AltRight went to an assembly that was peaceful and legal,” Tefft wrote early Monday morning on his Facebook page. “The AltRight went to assemble in order to advocate for the rights of white people to exist and protest the erasure of American culture, history, and to uphold the First Amendment. We followed every legal measure and were cooperative with authorities…”

“The state violated our Constitutional rights and let Antifa and BLM do the knife work for them. Any blood is on the hands of the police, the city of Charlottesville, and the state of Virginia.”

Tefft continued by saying the rally was not a Ku Klux Klan or neo Nazi rally, but an AltRight rally.

Richard Spencer and white-right activists facing police line – online sources

“This was a rally by people advocating for white identity. And it was brutally shut down. The media sees the deaths as a godsend so that the tyranny of the government can be forgotten and retroactively justified,” Tefft said.

“It was a trap, plain and simple. But let us be clear. Ultimately, this was a victory for us. Our movement will be emboldened by Charlottesville. The ‘Unite the Right’ rally legitimized our struggle.

“The is the beginning of the white civil rights movement.”

Since Tefft’s turn to white supremacist ideals, friends and family have denounced him, yet he still remains loyal to his cause. His father, Pearce, recently published a letter condemning his son’s beliefs.

“I, along with all of his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate my son’s vile, hateful, and racist rhetoric and actions,” Pearce Tefft wrote. “We do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs. He did not learn them at home.”

The Tefft family has remained mostly quiet since Fargoan Luke Safely identified Tefft as a Nazi last February.

“Peter Tefft, my son, is not welcome at our family gatherings any longer. I pray my prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs and return home. He once joked, ‘The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.’

“Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into that oven, too. Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all.”

So far, the Charlottesville tragic events have spurred little response from the state’s Republican leadership. Senator Heidi Heitkamp D-ND, tweeted Sunday evening. “Yesterday was a terrible and tragic day. The KKK and neo Nazis have no place in our country.”

On Sunday, Congressman Kevin Cramer R-ND, re-tweeted a post by Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representative, saying, “The views fueling the spectacle in Charlottesville are repugnant. Let it only serve to unite Americans against this kind of vile bigotry.”

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke pointed to President Donald Trump as the bedrock for the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville rally.

“Today will be a historic day, remembered as the moment everything changed,” Duke tweeted.

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country,” Duke said in a video uploaded to Twitter. “We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he’s going to take our country back. That’s what we gotta do.”

James Bergman preparing to sing “We’ll Still Stand” – photo by C.S. Hagen

Later, Duke reminded President Trump on Twitter on exactly who his greatest constituency was. “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror and remember it was white Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

Shortly after one woman, Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a car allegedly driven by James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, plowed into a crowd, and two police officer were killed when their helicopter crashed, Trump gave a press conference weakly condemning the violence.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence, on many sides,” Trump said. “On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country.”

At least 19 others were also injured during the rally.

Trump’s vague statement spurred Merck CEO Ken Crazier to quit the president’s manufacturing business council, according to the USA Today. His casual remarks also inspired a question from Richard Spenser, a white supremacist and president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank.

“Did Trump just denounce Antifa?” Spencer tweeted.

Heyer’s death prompted a Fargo/Moorhead response late Sunday night, when nearly 100 people gathered for a candlelight vigil on Veterans Memorial Bridge. With only a few hours of preparation time, Fargoan James Bergman wrote the song “We’ll Still Stand,” which he performed for the first time Sunday night.

“If I stand up against hate (in spite of all my fear), and someone strikes me down, the ground might be bloody but my conscience will be clear,” some of the song lyrics stated.

Candlelight vigil on Veterans Memorial Bridge to remember Heather Heyer – photo by C.S. Hagen

“The idea that people who marched in Charlottesville believe they are Christian, that is disgusting to me,” Bergman later said before the crowd. “We can’t afford to be silent right now. We need to show up, we need to stand up, and we need to speak up against hate.”

Moorhead Mayor Del Ray Williams spoke at the event.

“I don’t know if racism or hatred has necessarily increased in our community,” Williams said. “It is a hard thing to measure. What seems to have changed is the nationalists seem to feel emboldened to speak out publicly. I am proud of our community members that came out to the candlelight vigil last night to offer support and love to counter the nationalist movement.”

Ruth Buffalo, an organizer of the event, encouraged people to speak their minds. “This is a brave space, to step forward and take action,” Buffalo said.

“We need to be kinder than is needed,” Jen Welle, of Moorhead said.

“This has been happening in our country for a long, long time and Heather is another name on that long list,” Melissa Gonzalez, of Fargo said.

“We are called to speak for those who are voiceless,” Martin Avery, of Fargo said.

Diogenes Alexander Rex and Hamida Dakane during the candlelight vigil on Veterans Memorial Bridge – photo by C.S. Hagen

Amal Dei, a former refugee from South Sudan, spoke about how her heart was torn apart when she heard of Heyer’s death. “But love will always win no matter what.”

Dana Bisignani, of the Democratic Socialist Party, quoted Welsh socialist Raymond Williams. “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, not despair convincing.

“Part of the reason we have so much hate is because of decades of decimating our public schools,” Bisignani said.

Shaun King, senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, condemned the violence in Charlottesville.

“I see Heather as a martyr in this modern day movement against injustice and oppression,” King said. “I’ve said it many times, but if you ever wondered what it would be like to be alive in the Civil Rights Movement, you are living in that time right now. And if you ever wondered who you would be or what you would do in those circumstances, the best indication is what you did this weekend.”

During a North Dakota United Against Hate rally in early August, Tefft said he planned to first attend the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and then begin planning rallies in the Fargo/Moorhead area.

“I want to bring awareness to a lot of these issues, and the only way to do it is out in the public square,” Tefft said. One of the issues he plans on focusing on is mass immigration into North Dakota, which he claims is an anti-white policy.

Candlelight vigil in Fargo for Heather Heyer – photo by C.S. Hagen

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