Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

How would you feel if your neighborhood was repeatedly picked for post prison placement of predatory offenders? January 30, 2013

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:03 AM
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SERIOUSLY, NOT AGAIN, I thought to myself upon hearing that a Level 3 sex offender is moving into my neighborhood.

This marks the fourth, perhaps fifth, time in recent years (I’ve lost track) that I’ve had to worry about a predatory offender settling within blocks of my Faribault home.

I am not happy. Not happy at all. Who would be?

A city of Faribault snow plow spreading salt and sand onto the street past my house on Monday.

This shows a portion of my Willow Street neighborhood, but not the block in which the offender will be living. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo, January 2012.

I wondered why these particular criminals, those most likely to re-offend, keep choosing my neighborhood. So I posed that question to Faribault Police Chief Andy Bohlen in an e-mail. Captain Neal Pederson of the FPD responded on Bohlen’s behalf:

As to why they often locate on Willow – when offenders are released from prison they work with their supervision agents to find housing. Some owners have fewer qualms about who they rent to than others.

Alright then. Let me ask this to the supervising agents and the accommodating property owners: Would you want to live next door to, or within two blocks of (like me), a man who has served time for criminal sexual contact with male and female victims between the ages of two and 15?

I would be surprised if you answered “yes.”

I know. The man has done his time. But…put yourself in my position and that of my neighbors, many with children in this offender’s target age group. I can count 15 children living within eyesight of my front yard.

Put yourselves in the shoes of the children who will walk past this predator’s home on the way to their Willow Street bus stop (practically within a stone’s throw of the offender’s doorstep) or to the public library or community center just blocks away. How would you feel if you were their parents?

Put yourselves in my neighborhood, in this defined section of Willow Street, which repeatedly has been chosen to house predatory offenders. How would you feel? I bet you’d feel as frustrated and upset as me and my neighbors that your neighborhood is continually singled out for post prison placement of predatory offenders.

I realize my neighbors and I can’t do anything to keep this offender from moving onto our street upon his February 7 release from prison. But we can voice our opinions and concerns and gather information at a community notification meeting slated for 6 p.m. Thursday, January 31, at the Faribault Police Department.

Police department spokesman Pederson assured me that local media, schools and the nearby community center have been notified of the offender’s pending release. The FPD has posted information on its website.

On Monday I received a community alert phone call advising me of the situation and community notification meeting. My neighbor directly across the street did not. I hope my other neighbors got the message. Somehow. I’ll be knocking on a few doors. We as a neighborhood and others in Faribault, including representatives of the bus company, need to attend that meeting with the Minnesota Department of Corrections and local police. We need to become informed.

That is seemingly all we have right now—the power to arm ourselves with information to protect ourselves and our children.

FOR DETAILED INFORMATION on the predatory offender moving into the 300 block of Willow Street in Faribault on February 7, click here to the Minnesota Department of Corrections website.

TO READ A POST about a community notification meeting I attended just two years ago, click here.

© Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Another reminder that I don’t live in Mayberry May 11, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:37 AM
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YESTERDAY MORNING I was obliviously writing on my computer when I noticed a young man standing directly in front of the sidewalk leading to my front door. Now, lots of pedestrians pass my home. But, typically, they do not stand and stare at my house. And typically, they are not wearing black baseball caps tipped to the side nor do red bandannas sprout from their back pockets.

I was not born yesterday. I am well aware of gang colors and attire.

But this man was committing no crime by standing there on a public sidewalk.

However, my intuition told me to keep an eye on him and to let him know I had seen him.

So I walked into the living room, making sure he spotted me through the open front door. I considered slamming the interior door and locking the dead bolt in place. But I figured with a locked screen door, traffic passing by and my cell phone within reach, I was safe. Besides, I didn’t want him to think I was intimidated or afraid.

So I returned to my office, until I heard voices. I walked back to the living room to find the man, now joined by a young woman, sitting on my front steps within feet of me.

I didn’t really think, just strode over to the screen door and boldly blurted, “What are you doing on my front steps?”

The guy said something I couldn’t hear due to the traffic noise and my hearing loss.

But the woman sneered, “Sitting here.”

They didn’t move.

I didn’t budge.

For a split second I worried that I had made a grave mistake by confronting them.

But then they slowly got up and ambled across the street. I watched as the man grabbed at the woman’s arm and she pulled back. I was fully prepared to call 911 to report an assault if the situation escalated. But it didn’t and the couple continued on, separately, until they entered a nearby house.

My husband and I have called 911 before—once in the dead of a cold winter night during an assault and once when a young man pounded on our door seeking protection from a throng of would-be attackers pursuing him.

We don’t live in a high crime neighborhood, like Faribault has a high crime neighborhood. But our community is certainly not immune to serious crime.

Many years ago, two blocks from my house, a man was stabbed in a drug-related case. I watched as a SWAT team searched my block for the murder weapon, a knife.

Last year the SWAT team drove past my house en route to a meth house bust three blocks away.

For years, suspected drug dealers lived across the street from me.

Gang graffiti has been painted onto buildings, fences, stop signs and more as close as directly across the street from me.

I’ve attended several level three sex offender meetings with one of the offenders moving in two blocks away.

Faribault is not Mayberry R.F.D. And yesterday I was reminded of that once again.

ACCORDING TO INFORMATION published in the 2010 Faribault Police Department’s annual report, the Rice County Gang Suppression Unit “has identified 50 gangs and approximately 350 gang members with ties to the City of Faribault. Of the 350, 150 are confirmed gang members, meaning they meet at least three of ten state defined criteria.”

READERS, HOW WOULD YOU have handled the situation I faced yesterday with the suspicious young man staring at my house and then sitting on my front steps with the young woman? Should I have ignored them, done something differently?

Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling