Tag Archives: what is Dickinson North Dakota Like

The Intentional And Deliberate Collapse Of Dickinson, North Dakota

I am not writing this blog post solely out of hate, though I do hate many of the people in Dickinson, and I want to see them get what is coming to them, for what they did to me, and to other people.  Even so, I still feel like warning people, especially the ordinary, plain people who are usually the last to know anything.

The people in Fargo, Bismarck, and Grand Forks, the wealthy people, the bankers, the people at the highest level of government in North Dakota, they want to collapse Dickinson, North Dakota for several different reasons.

Everyone outside of western North Dakota is aware of the repeated and continual frauds committed in the Dickinson area:  enormous government funding and donation funding to build the St. Alexius Hospital which is an empty shell and inadequate;  Dickinson State University not-for-profit Foundation receiving investor funding and donations to build Hawks Point Assisted Living and the Biesiot Activities Center, yet not paying and denying liability for construction loans from banks;  $1 million private donation to open the Strom Center For Entrepreneurship and all the money is gone with no accounting for it;  Dickinson State University awarding hundreds of college diplomas to foreign students who never completed the curriculum; Civil Service Commission never once in its history ever siding with a City of Dickinson employee;  methamphetamine addicts running loose and out-of-control in the City of Dickinson.

Everyone outside of western North Dakota is aware of what has been going on in Dickinson, and it has been decided, that one of the ways to handle it, is to make Dickinson as small and inconsequential as possible, to collapse Dickinson.

For instance, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library And Museum being constructed on the DSU campus was an idea that would have increased the enrollment at DSU, increased the importance of DSU, and brought many visitors and money to Dickinson.  The Governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, stepped in and used all of his influence and powers of persuasion with the board of directors of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library And Museum Foundation to not build in Dickinson.

Another example, the president of DSU, Thomas Mitzel, came up with the idea, that DSU could become a polytechnic campus, providing certificates and degrees for people working in industries in the Dickinson area.  This idea would have been a tremendous boost for DSU and Dickinson.  The oil and gas industries would have gladly provided financial support to DSU for training that prepared people for employment with them.  Students from around the country would have been attracted to DSU for its ability to place graduates in high paying jobs in the oil and gas industry.  Not only did the State of North Dakota not listen to president Thomas Mitzel’s ideas, it cut DSU’s funding in order to show president Mitzel that he needed to leave.

The truth is, that the State of North Dakota does not want DSU to grow and prosper, it wants DSU to go belly-up.  It wants DSU’s enrollment, reputation, and status to decline so much, that there is clear justification to close DSU.  You just watch and wait to see all the ways the State of North Dakota has planned to decrease funding, eliminate programs, discourage administrators and professors, hire ineffective leadership.

As I have written in previous blog posts, the Banks have implemented lending policies so that people can not buy homes in Dickinson.  This will cause homes not to sell, sellers defaulting on their mortgages, and home prices in Dickinson falling drastically.

The intention is, to diminish the size of Dickinson, to collapse Dickinson, to make Dickinson about the same size as Bowman, New England, Belfield, Beach, Killdeer, Richardton, Taylor, Dodge, or Halliday.

With Dickinson being just a small-town gas stop on the interstate, it will merit only minimal funding from the State, and only minimal political influence.  At the same time, whatever oil and gas production that is occurring in western North Dakota, this oil and gas revenue won’t be going to Dickinson with its small population, it can go to fund projects in the more civilized areas of Fargo, Bismarck, Jamestown, and Grand Forks.

So what does this mean to the ordinary, plain people living in Dickinson?  It means that Dickinson is going to get smaller, and smaller, and smaller, to where it eventually looks similar to New England, Bowman, or Belfield.

This is not just due to the oil boom going away, the entire rest of the state, the bankers, the highest level politicians in the State, the Governor, they don’t want State funding to go to this area, and they want the oil and gas revenue money from this area to go elsewhere, not here.

When Dickinson shrinks to a small size, the people in this area become poor, and the property here becomes very cheap, it is certain that the bankers and the wealthy people in the eastern side of the State will buy up the land and mineral rights, and promote drilling and fracking in this area, which is one of their long term plans.  To financially ruin this area, so that they can then plunder this area for its resources.

Dunham’s Sports Has The Wrong Idea About Dickinson, North Dakota

A year and a half ago I began seeing newspaper articles about a sporting goods store called “Dunham’s Sports” intending to open a store in the Prairie Hills Mall in Dickinson, North Dakota.

I didn’t think that this was a very good idea.  I had always had the impression that people in western North Dakota are not very interested in sports, recreation, or physical fitness.  I have lived in this area for about seven years, and I have noticed every day that the people in Dickinson are mostly overweight, they do not care about their appearance or health, most of the people drink and smoke, and many use illegal drugs.

The farmers in this area, they farm, work on farm equipment, work on their vehicles, work on hobby cars, motorcycles, and boats.  Throughout the day they smoke and use tobacco products.  Then they sit down, drink beer, and watch TV.

The workers in this area, the oil field workers and the construction workers, they try to work as many hours as possible per week in order to pay their bills and take care of their families.  They get up at 5:00 a.m. and get home at 7:00 p.m., they eat, and go to bed.  They don’t play sports.

The kids in this area, I have never seen such a lack of tree-fort builders, bicycle riders, ball throwers, ball kickers, and weapons makers.  The kids here mostly stay inside, because it is cold, because they are lazy, and because their parents tell them to.

So what I am saying, is that the people here, who are mostly farmers and blue collar workers, they don’t play sports.  The people here are not health and fitness conscious, they are overweight beer drinkers and smokers.  The kids here are not active, they mostly stay inside.

The Dunham’s Sports has been open in Dickinson for one year now.  I went there once when this store first opened, and though they had a large selection of many types of sporting goods, their prices were not appealing to me.  I was expecting discount prices for some reason, and I was disappointed.

Today I went to Dunham’s Sports for the second time.  They had a very large selection of kayaks, about forty different kayaks.  I bought two kayaks several years ago at Menards, on sale for about $150 each.  WalMart sells kayaks for a little more than this.  Tractor Supply and Shopko sold kayaks for a little more than WalMart.  The kayaks at Dunham’s Sports are nice, but they get into the $300 to $700 price range.

So another thing that I want to point out about Dunham’s Sports, is another way that they don’t understand people in Dickinson, people in Dickinson are cheap.  Myself, and most people in Dickinson, they are very cost conscious.  Even if they can easily afford $300 to $700 for a kayak, they won’t pay this much if they can get one at Menards, WalMart, or Tractor Supply for $200.

Altogether, I don’t know who did the market research on Dickinson for Dunham’s Sports, but somehow I think that they were led to believe that the people in Dickinson were “affluent”, “young”, “professionals”, …… “yuppies”, when Dickinson is the exact opposite of this.  The people in Dickinson are blue-collar trades people who are cheap, and not interested in sports, fitness, or health.

The Police In Dickinson Are Close To Committing The Crime Of Violating My Civil Rights

It is just about to the point where the Police in Dickinson, North Dakota could be criminally charged with violating my Civil Rights.  The penalty for this, is up to ten years in prison.  I will explain the law on this, and what the Police in Dickinson are doing to me.

Under U.S. Code Title 18, Chapter 13, Sections 241 and 242:

Section 241:  If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;……

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

 

Section 242:  Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both;

The above citations of the United States Code, are not my interpretation, they are exactly word for word what the law says.

Many U.S. court cases have decided, and established the law by precedent, that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of an individual to travel freely.  Here are some examples of U.S. court decisions regarding this:

“The right to travel is a part of the liberty of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.”
[Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116, 125 (1958)]

“The right to travel, to go from place to place as the means of transportation permit, is a natural right subject to the rights of others and to reasonable regulation under law. A restraint imposed by the Government of the United States upon this liberty, therefore, must conform with the provision of the Fifth Amendment that ‘No person shall be * * * deprived of * * * liberty * * * without due process of law’.”
[Schactman v. Dulles, 96 App DC 287, 225 F.2d 938, at 941]

In my case, the two or more persons who are conspiring to oppress, threaten, and intimidate me while I am exercising my Constitutionally protected right to travel freely, are Dickinson Police Chief Dusty Dassinger, and the Police Officers who keep stopping me.

I have explained in several recent blog posts, that in my thirty-four years of driving, I average about one stop by Law Enforcement every five years.  In a period of sixty days in Dickinson, I was stopped by Law Enforcement three times.

This past Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m., I was returning home on four-lane Villard Street in Dickinson.  Villard Street was almost completely vacant at this time on Sunday morning.  During the last mile of my drive on Villard Street, there were only two approaching vehicles.

I slowed down and put on my left turn-signal one city block from where I needed to make a left turn onto a side street.  I had plenty of time to make a left turn in front of the approaching vehicles on Villard Street, until one of the vehicles sped up quite a bit.  I had to then come to a complete stop on Villard Street, as the approaching vehicle caused me to be unable to make a left turn by its speeding up.

I waited for the quickly approaching vehicle to pass by so that I could make a left turn, but once I was forced to come to a complete stop and wait on this vehicle to pass by, this vehicle slowed down, it slowed down a lot.  I became frustrated as I waited on the approaching vehicle as it slowed down more and more.  I almost went ahead and made a left turn in front of it, it was going so slow.

I could then see that this was a Dickinson Police vehicle.  I had seen this vehicle far to the east on Villard Street, and to the west end of Villard Street was another three miles.  Why, why, on a Sunday morning did this Police vehicle need to turn onto the same exact side street that I was trying to turn onto?

What this Police Officer was trying to do, was instigate a conflict and cause some kind of driving violation that he could charge me with.  Initially, I had plenty of time to make a left turn, until this Police Officer sped up quite a bit, in order to be able to cite me for turning dangerously close in front of him.  Then once I came to a complete stop and waited, this Police Officer slowed way down in order to try to get me to turn in front of him again.  The truth is, this Police Officer didn’t need to turn onto the same side street as me, he was just trying to cause an altercation.

Mentally Ill Drug Addict Woman Tries Assault Fraud In Dickinson, North Dakota

What I saw happen yesterday, Sunday, in Dickinson, North Dakota was very upsetting and troubling to me.  I hope that people in Dickinson will share this, remember this, and discuss this with Law Enforcement in Dickinson to make them aware.

On Sunday, October 20, at 4:00 p.m, I went to the M&H gas station on Villard Street in Dickinson to buy gasoline and a twelve-pack of Coke.  While I was filling my vehicle with gas, I noticed two other male customers who were also putting gasoline in their vehicles.  I went inside and I bought a twelve-pack of Coke, then I went back out to my vehicle at the gas pumps.

As I was getting into my vehicle to leave, I saw a very new, white color, four-door, four-wheel-drive Dodge 1500 pickup truck pull into the parking lot at the west side of the M&H gas station building.  A skinny woman, about 30 years of age, quickly got out of the passenger side of this Dodge truck, acting angry, slamming the truck door very hard, stomping away, then she began screaming frantically for help.

No one was following after her, and no one was doing anything to her.  The driver of the Dodge truck, he just sat in the truck.  The woman continued to scream and yell, and yell for someone to call the Police.  She then threw her phone down onto the concrete parking lot.  At one point, she dropped down onto the sidewalk beside the M&H building, to try to act like she was hurt and injured.

The driver of the Dodge truck then got out of his truck, and he began to try to dial on his phone.  I assumed that he was calling the Police himself.  The woman then ran over to the male driver of the Dodge truck, who was dialing his phone, and she began trying to hit him.  He held onto each of her wrists as she tried to hit him.  She quit hitting him, and she then walked about ten feet away.  No one was harming her, or preventing her from leaving.

On her own, with no one touching her or doing anything to her, she stomped quickly back over to the Dodge truck, and she got back into the passenger side of the Dodge truck.  She was not hurt or injured.  She began flailing around on the inside of the truck, like she was trying to cause damage and break things.

The driver of the Dodge truck got back in, and he began backing out of the parking lot.  The woman opened the truck door all the way, and she began yelling for someone to call the Police.  No one was preventing her from getting out of the Dodge truck.

The male customer closest to me at the gas pumps, he had stopped what he was doing to see if this woman was in trouble, and he appeared to want to help, but he didn’t know what to do.  I said to him that no one is doing anything to her, she is acting like she is out of her mind on drugs.  The male customer replied, “Obviously”.

I was going to call the Police, because the way that she was acting, someone was going to get hurt or get falsely accused of assaulting this woman.  I drove in the same direction as this white Dodge truck, to be able to tell the Police dispatcher where this truck was, and what direction it was heading.  The woman got out of this Dodge truck right at the next corner, right at Main Street, and the Dodge truck drove away.

The woman began screaming bloody murder, like she had just been kidnapped and raped, first dropping down onto the sidewalk like she was injured and hurt, but then jumping up and running out into Main Street to try to stop passing cars, yelling for help, like it was a matter of life and death.  A man wearing a backpack who happened to be passing by on Main Street on the other side of the street from her, he ran over to help her.

The woman then dropped back down onto the sidewalk like she was injured and hurt.  A few times it looked like she was trying to get back up and run out into traffic again, as I came to the stop sign at Main Street and I made a right turn.  I had dialed the Police dispatcher, and the dispatcher “Miranda” said that she had just received other calls about this woman, she asked me to please hold.  I explained to the Police dispatcher Miranda what I had seen, and I gave her my name and phone number.

Within a few minutes, just as the Police were arriving, the passerby on Main Street who had run across the street to help this woman, he looked like he was trying to get away from her.  It appeared that he had had enough of trying to help her, realizing that she was out of her mind, that she was probably on drugs, that she was not injured, and that no one was trying to come after her.

While I was parked on the side of Main Street, waiting on hold, then talking to the Police dispatcher Miranda, looking in my rear-view and side-view mirrors, this woman was continuing to try to get up, and yelling hysterically at passing cars.

This woman was out of her mind.  There was nothing physically wrong with her when she got out of the Dodge truck at the M&H gas station, slammed the truck door, and angrily stomped across the parking lot.  She dropped down on the sidewalk to pretend like she was hurt, but jumped right back up and quickly stomped back over to the truck, and got in.  No one was preventing her from walking away.

I realized that if this woman had even just grabbed hold of my vehicle door handle, or any man’s vehicle door handle, passersby and the Police would have jumped to the conclusion that the vehicle driver must have just assaulted, harmed, raped, or drugged this woman, and were now trying to get away.  Or, that they had hit her with their vehicle.

Even worse, if this woman would have run and jumped in the back seat or passenger seat of my vehicle, or any man’s vehicle, like what she appeared to be trying to do with passing vehicles on Main Street, the Police never ever would have believed the vehicle driver saying, “I have never seen this woman before, I don’t know who she is, she just ran and jumped in my vehicle.”  The Police would be handcuffing the driver, and taking the driver to jail for assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, and rape.

Because this woman was behaving so hysterically like someone had just kidnapped her, assaulted her, and raped her, yelling for help, yelling for people to call the Police like her life was in immediate danger, upon witnessing this, everyone passing by appeared to believe that something like this must have just happened.

These hysterics were all just an act, dupe, con, and fraud.  She could have caused an innocent man to be arrested, charged, and jailed for a serious crime with this act that she was putting on.  The Police in Dickinson couldn’t tell and would not have known that she was making the whole thing up.

Women in Dickinson probably think that this is funny, and something that they can try too.  The next time that I happen upon a woman screaming for help, I am going to press my vehicle door lock button, and drive away as quickly as possible, because apparently women think that it is a good idea to make false accusations of assault, sexual assault, and rape.

Update:

I waited for the Dickinson Press newspaper to publish its most recent “Police Blotter” or “Crime & Courts” article, in order to try to find out who this woman was on Sunday, October 20.  On October 23, the Dickinson Press newspaper article “Stark County District Court Oct. 21 & 22” had this record:

“Jessica Michelle Smith, 33, of Dickinson, initial appearance: violation of order prohibiting contact (misdemeanor); bond hearing: contact by bodily fluids or excrement (felony); bond hearing: simple assault domestic violence, preventing arrest, unlawful possession drug paraphernalia (misdemeanors)”

The above record kind of matched the incident and the behavior that I witnessed on Sunday, it involved a 33 year old woman, simple assault domestic violence, preventing arrest, possession of drug paraphernalia, and violation of a no contact order.  I went to the North Dakota Court Repository website to look at the actual date of arrest for this incident, and the charge of violating a no contact order did occur on Sunday, October 20.

I tried to find a photo of Jessica Michelle Smith on the internet, but I could not, so I can’t say that she is the person that I saw on Sunday.  I am still trying to find out if this was her.

Near Accident Almost Costing Me My License And My Job

For the first two weeks of October, I griped and complained about getting stopped by the Police in Dickinson and almost getting 9 points on my driver’s license at one time:  3 points for failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and 6 points for not being able to find my proof of liability insurance.  I ended up with just 3 points on my driver’s license for the time being.  When you get over 11 points, you automatically lose your driver’s license.

The job site where I have been working for the past two years is about a one hour drive from Dickinson, it’s not like I can walk or ride my bicycle there if I lose my driver’s license.  It’s out in the middle of nowhere, a rural area with large farms, not a place where you can rent something close by if you can’t drive there.  Besides that, the owner of the company that I work for stated last week that if any employee gets a suspended driver’s license, they can’t work there.

So I am trying to be very careful driving.  On top of everything else, I hit a deer on the way home from work two months ago.  This was the first time in my life that I ever actually hit a deer.  One of my coworkers hit a deer two years ago on the way to this job site and it did $20,000 damage to his new truck.  Another coworker hit a deer on the way home about eight months ago and it totaled his Dodge Caravan, then two weeks later while driving his mother’s car to work he hit another deer and it totaled his mother’s Chrysler 200.

I don’t want to hit another deer, and I don’t want to get stopped by Law Enforcement again, so I drive very slow to and from work.  When vehicles start getting close behind me, I pull off the road at the nearest approach and let them pass me.  About three times per week on the way home, I pull off the road to let one of my coworkers pass me.

This past week, there was a very severe early snow storm that lasted for several days.  Several times, the interstate that passes through this area was closed due to the number of vehicles sliding off the road.  On the way to work on the two-lane highway, I did see a couple of snow related accidents, one where a four-wheel-drive Dodge 1500 pickup truck slid into the back of a dump-truck snow plow.

Last week, getting ready to drive home from work in the dark after working a twelve hour shift, I stopped at the job site exit to let the coworker who usually passes me on the way home, I let him go ahead of me.  He drives a front-wheel-drive Honda Civic, which handles very good on snow and ice, probably even better than a four-wheel-drive truck.

My coworker got out onto the two-lane highway where the speed limit is 65 mph, and he drove 45-50 mph, which was what I was planning to do.  The highway was very icy, probably about the worst I had ever seen.  I stayed about 300 feet behind my coworker.  Every time he came to a very bad ice spot, I could see his brake lights come on, he was slowing down, but he shouldn’t have been using his brakes so much, I thought, just let off the gas pedal.

After about eight miles, I didn’t see my coworker’s tail lights in front of me.  Driving another 100 feet, I then saw that my coworker’s Honda Civic was sideways across both lanes of the highway.  At first I thought that he was trying to turn around, but then I realized that he had hit a bad ice spot and spun out.  Now only about 200 feet from him, I gently put on my brakes, but all wheels locked up, and I began sliding towards him, not slowing down at all, going about 35 mph.  Colliding with him was inevitable.

The vehicle that I was driving, is my most favorite vehicle of any one that I have ever owned.  I try not to drive it too much in order to not put many miles on it, and keep it safe.  I don’t think that I will ever be able to replace this vehicle.  But here I was, sliding towards my coworker going about 35 mph.  He was sitting there appearing to be in shock, and I am about to smash up my most prized possession.

The vehicle that I was driving is all-time-four-wheel drive, it’s always in four-wheel drive, so when I was about 100 feet from my coworker, sliding sideways just like he had slid sideways, not slowing down at all, I let off the brake and I gave it about 15% throttle.  The wheels caught just barely enough to pull me towards the high side of the highway.

I slid past my co-worker still going about 35 mph, but now with the tail end of my vehicle headed for the snow embankment on the high side of the highway.  When the rear end of my vehicle hit the snow embankment, it would be just like the rear tires hitting a curb, causing my vehicle to flip over.  All I could do was wait for impact.  When I hit the snow bank, I didn’t hit solid enough to flip over.

I drove my vehicle out of the snow bank, and I parked on the edge of the highway.  I spoke to my coworker briefly, and he said that he wanted me to go ahead of him for the rest of the way home.  I drove about 45-50 mph the rest of the way home with my hazard-flasher lights on.  This was the worst and most icy road that I had ever seen in my seventeen years of driving in snow.

This time, I gradually put about two miles distance between me and the vehicles behind me.  It was more than a one hour drive home this time, only going 45-50 mph, but not even the idiots could go any faster and catch up to me.  My coworker called me just as I was entering Dickinson to see if I had made it, I was out of sight from him.  I told him to stop at Hardees restaurant when he got into Dickinson.

When my coworker arrived at Hardees, I said to him that if I had hit him, that I would probably have been cited for the accident.  I asked him if he knew that we would have had to report this accident, if you don’t report an accident in North Dakota, it’s six points on your driver’s license.  Judging from my coworker’s response, he didn’t know that you had to report the accident, he would not have wanted to report the accident, at first.

I was kind of angry, not so much at my coworker, but at the whole situation.  I was driving slow, I let my coworker go ahead of me, I was staying 300 feet behind him, plenty far enough I thought to be able to stop in time.  The ice that he spun out on, in a front-wheel-drive car, was the ice that I had to try to stop on, and I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t even steer away from him, let alone stop.

I would have been cited for the accident, 3 more points on my driver’s license.  My coworker who acted like he would not have wanted to report this accident, because he didn’t know that he had to, would probably have changed his mind once he talked to his insurance company.  Another 6 points for me for not reporting the accident, plus the 3 points for being cited for the accident, plus the 3 points that I got at the beginning of the month, means a suspended driver’s license for me.

I am so uncomfortable, uneasy, and unsettled living in North Dakota.  So many bad things are always happening, even though all I am trying to do is just go to work, go to the grocery store, and just pay my bills.  Living here really is like being in prison, nothing good ever happens, only bad things happen here.

Update:

I talked to a Highway Patrol Officer for about five to ten minutes, describing what had happened, and asking him questions.  He told me that the Highway Patrol does not always make a determination of who was at fault in an accident, nor do they always give someone a citation for an accident, as in a weather/road condition/stalled vehicle related accident.

The Highway Patrol Officer also informed me, that up until August of 2019 it was mandatory to report a vehicle accident where there was more than $1,000 damage.  After August of 2019, the vehicle accident reporting law was updated, where it became mandatory to report a vehicle accident where there was more than $4,000 damage.

Lastly, the Highway Patrol Officer indicated that if all parties involved in a vehicle accident choose to exchange identification and insurance information, and forego reporting an accident where no one was injured and there was not that much damage, the Highway Patrol is not interested in trying to give anyone a citation for not reporting the accident.

The Phat Fish Brewery Is Family Friendly

In 2019 a new pizza restaurant and brewery was opened in Dickinson, North Dakota, called “Phat Fish Brewing”.

I kept hearing and reading that this restaurant and brewery is “family friendly”, which I think means that you can bring your kids with you, that it is O.K. for kids, or that it is meant for kids too.

From the Phat Fish Brewing website, it says:

“We are a family-friendly Brewery and Pizzeria with unique offerings created just for Dickinson!”

From a Dickinson Press newspaper article, where a reporter interviewed the owner:

“The new restaurant on Villard Street promises original brew and family fun…..A kids area is planned, and an area for adults to play games.”

“You don’t have to be 21 to be able to come in and have a pizza and a soda,” Scharf said. “We’re going to be doing our own custom root beer and cream soda. We’ll have root beer floats and smores pizzas.”

This is kind of what I picture in my mind:

I Talked To The Police Officer Who Stopped Me Last Night In Dickinson, North Dakota

On Monday night, September 30, at 11:00 p.m., I was stopped by a Police Officer in Dickinson, North Dakota for failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.  I had waited until late at night to drive to WalMart for groceries, because I didn’t want to go to the store when it was busy and crowded.  I was not in a hurry at all, I was driving less than the speed limit, and the last thing I was expecting was to be stopped by the Police.

When the Police Officer asked me for my driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance, I told the Police Officer that I would have to look on my phone for a copy of my proof of insurance.  At the moment, I could not remember whether I had taken a photograph of the insurance card off of my computer screen, or if I had had this insurance card e-mailed to me.

I bought this vehicle that I was driving, six weeks ago.  Initially, what I had placed in the glove box as proof of insurance, was the price quotation that State Farm Insurance had faxed to me, the form that I had to sign and fax back to State Farm Insurance, and I had a photo on my phone of the check payment written out to State Farm Insurance with the dollar amount matching the price quote for this vehicle, the date, and in the memo section the make, model, and year of this vehicle.

The Police Officer was not believing me that I had insurance on this vehicle, even after I showed him the paperwork that I had in the glove box, and the photo of the check payment for insurance on this vehicle.  I had other proof of insurance cards on my phone for other vehicles of mine, but not this one.  I tried to go to and log onto my e-mail, but I couldn’t get the log in page to come up on my phone like it does on my computer.

The Police Officer mentioned to me that failure to have insurance or proof of insurance was a $140 fine, which was not that big a deal to me.  As he was writing my ticket, I was able to get to my e-mail on my phone, go back to August, and luckily I found the proof of insurance card for this vehicle.  I handed my phone to the Police Officer, and he looked at my proof of insurance card for this vehicle.

The Police Officer gave me a ticket for failure to stop at a stop sign, which he explained was $40 and three points on my driver’s license.  I explained to the Police Officer, that I know that the Police in Dickinson are trying to stop as many people as possible in order to try to discover drug crime, but for people like me who are not criminals, this is a problem because I have been stopped three time by Law Enforcement in the past sixty days.

When I got home and I began looking on the internet to try to see how many points would go on my Idaho driver’s license, when these points would appear on my driver’s license, what online driver course I could take to get these points removed, and when I would need to take this online driver course, I found out that I nearly got nine points on my driver’s license for this traffic stop, and that the next time that I got stopped within the next twelve months, my driver’s license would automatically be suspended.

What I did not know or understand at first, was that there is no ticket for failure to have proof of insurance, there is only a ticket for failure to have insurance.  If I would have paid the $140 ticket for what I thought was failure to have proof of insurance, I would have actually been admitting to not having liability insurance, which in North Dakota on the first offense carries a penalty of six points on your driver’s license, and for the second offense twelve points on your driver’s license.

I had no idea that on the way home from WalMart at 11 p.m., not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign, would result in me losing my driver’s license.  But it’s worse than that, I didn’t understand what was going on, I didn’t understand how important it was to show more proof of insurance than what I had with me at the time, I didn’t know that paying the ticket for $140 would have been automatically admitting that I didn’t have liability insurance, which I did have liability insurance, I didn’t know that I would have had nine points on my license immediately, I would not have known that the next time I got stopped within the next twelve months that my driver’s license would automatically be suspended, … and I would have been driving around with a suspended driver’s license and not had any idea.

On Tuesday, I called a couple of DMV and IDT offices in Idaho to try to get some answers on how to handle the traffic ticket that I got on Monday night, to ask if and when the points would go on my Idaho driver’s license, and when and how many times could I take the online driver safety course to get the points removed from my driver’s license.

On Tuesday I called a couple of DMV and NDOT offices in North Dakota to ask questions, though the people in Bismarck were nice, they didn’t have all the answers.  I called the Dickinson Police Department to try to ask to speak to a Police Officer that I already knew like Shift Sergeant Moser, Officer Kinto, or Officer Bates, but was told no.  It was suggested to me that I speak to either the Police Officer who gave me the ticket, or his Shift Sergeant Jason Wallace this evening.

To clarify for those people reading this blog post who don’t understand why this is such a big deal to me:  My home is in Idaho 750 miles away, I am just here in Dickinson, North Dakota to work.  My work location is more than sixty miles from Dickinson, out in the middle of nowhere.  If I lose my driver’s license, I will lose my job.  I have trucks, trailers, and equipment that I have brought to Dickinson to do self-employed work, but without a driver’s license, I couldn’t do my self-employed work either.

If I lose my driver’s license, then my job, I don’t have anyone here to help me.  I don’t have any good friends here, any family members here, any church relationship here, any attorney or accountant business relationships here.  Without a driver’s license, without a job, without any income, that is when I would probably want to hire an attorney to try to help me get something like a temporary restricted license to drive to work, but the attorney would want thousands of dollars, and the Dickinson Police would just cause me to lose my restricted license as soon as possible.

I would not have had any idea that I was getting a total of nine points on my driver’s license by paying the $40 ticket and the $140 ticket from this traffic stop.  I would not have gotten any notification about the nine points on my driver’s license, because I have an Idaho driver’s license.  Any mail from the state of Idaho would be sent to my home or my P.O. box in Idaho.

I have to keep my Idaho driver’s license and do other things like pay state income tax to Idaho, as well as North Dakota, to legally claim Idaho residency.  My home in Idaho is protected from any kind of lawsuit judgement if it is my primary residence, my homestead, but not if it is classified as a second home or investment property.

Getting back to the point, I keep getting stopped so frequently by Law Enforcement in Dickinson, because they are trying to stop drug crime, that I am in danger of having my driver’s license suspended, being arrested for unwittingly driving on a suspended license, losing my job, having no way to earn a living, losing my apartment, and not even being able to drive my equipment and vehicles back to my home in Idaho.

I spent some time looking up on the internet the Police Officer who stopped me and gave me the ticket on Monday night.  He graduated from Dickinson State University about one year ago, he became a Police Officer about six months ago, and he is about 25 years old.

I called the Dickinson Police Department late Tuesday night when this Police Officer was back on duty, and I said that I wanted to ask him some questions about the ticket he gave me, and that I would like to meet him somewhere if possible.  The Dickinson Police Department got a hold of him, and he called me back.

I asked him if I had not found the State Farm Insurance card on my phone, would he have written me a ticket for failure to have liability insurance, he said yes.  I asked him if he would have told me that this ticket for not having insurance carries a six point penalty on your driver’s license, he said yes.  I explained to him, that I had no idea that paying the $140 ticket for failure to have liability insurance means that you agree that you have no liability insurance, I did have liability insurance.

I tried to explain to him again, better than I explained it to him on Monday night, that I understand that the Police are trying to detect crime, but the way that the Police are scrutinizing my driving, and the frequency at which the Police are stopping me, that I am going to lose my driver’s license.  I don’t think that I can drive perfectly all the time.  I am not a criminal, but the Police are turning me into a criminal, to where I am going to end up driving on a suspended license.

I briefly explained that the way that the Police are stopping me so often, that I am going to lose my driver’s license, then lose my job, then lose my home.

This Police Officer explained to me that he was just doing his job.  That he has to enforce traffic laws for public safety, people can’t speed and run stop signs just because they want to.  I explained to him that I don’t speed, that I drive slow, I am always being tailgated, and that I have to pull over to let people pass me all the time.  I didn’t run the stop sign, I just didn’t come to a complete stop.

After I got off the phone with this Police Officer, I had the impression that he believed that he was just doing his job, though I don’t think that he understands the impact of what he is doing.

People are supposed to have the right to travel freely in the U.S.  The whole point of the first communities in the U.S. creating government and Police Officers was to maintain peace and order, not for the Police to hide and sneak up on citizens to try to get them for something like the citizens are prey, enemies, or criminals.

If there is supposed to be a curfew at night in Dickinson, which I agree with, then this law should be voted on by citizens and then published as law.  In effect, what the Police in Dickinson are doing, is they have created a curfew law all on their own.  I see very few people driving at night in Dickinson, and I think that it is because they are scared of getting stopped by the Police and cited for something.

It has been pointed out to me by other people, which I realized was the truth, new, clean, expensive vehicles in Dickinson do not get stopped by the Police.  I just about never have seen a new, clean, expensive vehicle stopped by the Police in Dickinson, its always older less expensive vehicles that get stopped by the Police.

Getting Stopped By The Police Again In The Dickinson Prison Work Camp

This past year, I realized that what Dickinson, North Dakota is really like, it is like a Prison Work Camp.

For more than a year, I have been writing again and again, over and over, that I can’t even drive to work, or drive to the grocery store without the Police following me, stalking me, and trying to pull me over for something.

Back on March 8, 2018 I wrote a blog post article titled, “Getting Stopped By The Police In Dickinson, North Dakota”.  Here are some quotes from what I wrote back in March of 2018:

“I have written again, and again, and again, and again about not being able to go out at night in Dickinson, North Dakota because the Police are so eager and aggressive in stopping people for DUI, or trying to discover illegal activity.”

“At about 5:00 p.m., I drove from the restaurant to visit my friend at his home, who is old and in bad health.  At about 6:30 p.m., I drove to Dairy Queen and got an ice cream cone.  I was driving home from Dairy Queen on Villard Street, when a Dickinson Police car made a U-turn, came after me, followed me, and stopped me.  This turned an ordinary evening and outing, into an unwanted stressful situation.”

“I am so sick of this in Dickinson, being followed by the Police, so that they can think of a reason to pull you over, to try to give you a DUI, or find something else to charge you with.”

Tonight, September 30, I waited until 10:15 p.m. to go to WalMart so that the store would not be crowded.  I bought about $30 worth of groceries at WalMart, and then I drove home.  I drove at about 30 mph to the store, and at about 30 mph home from the store, I was not in a hurry at all.  When I got to the four-way stop at the intersection of 10th Avenue East and  21st Street East, I thought that I came to a complete stop, and then I made a right turn.

A Police Officer made a U-turn, came after me, followed me while he ran my license plate, then he pulled me over for failure to come to a complete stop at the stop sign.  I almost got a $140 ticket for failure to have proof of insurance, because I had the insurance card on my phone, but I wasn’t able to find the insurance card until the last minute.  I did get a ticket for failure to stop at the stop sign, $40 and three points against my license.

Six weeks ago I wrote about getting stopped by the Police in Dickinson, North Dakota, in a blog post article titled “Dickinson, North Dakota Is A Prison Work Camp”.  Here are a few quotes from what I wrote six weeks ago:

“In the past two years of living in North Dakota, I have been stopped by Law Enforcement more times than in my previous thirty-two years of driving.”

“I dread going anywhere in North Dakota, especially just going to the grocery store, going to work, or coming home from work.  In the past thirty days, while I was driving at the speed limit, not doing anything wrong, Law Enforcement that was travelling in the opposite direction, has made a U-turn after passing me, in order to come after me.”

“What Law Enforcement is trying to do, is stop me, ask me questions, and look in my vehicle in order to get me for something.”

I have been stopped three times by Law Enforcement in North Dakota in the past sixty days.  None of it was for speeding, because I drive slow, I am trying to be careful, and I am trying not to be stopped.  But I am learning that there seems to always be something that the Police can get you for, even if you are trying not to be pulled over.

In sixteen years of driving in Florida, from when I was sixteen years old to when I was 32 years old, I was stopped a total of three times by the Police, each time for speeding.  In ten years of driving in Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, I was stopped twice by the Police, once for speeding, once for a headlight out.  This is not normal to be stopped by Law Enforcement three times in sixty days, but this is North Dakota, and I am warning people not to move here.

What Dr. Thomas Mitzel Started But Wasn’t Allowed To Finish, DSU Becoming A Polytechnic Campus

In my previous blog post, I wrote about Dr. Thomas Mitzel giving his resignation as President of Dickinson State University, and leaving to become President of Kentucky Wesleyan College.

I knew that Dr. Thomas Mitzel would probably leave DSU sooner or later, because the town of Dickinson and North Dakota are difficult for normal people to live in, especially educated people.  It is very cold in North Dakota, and this area of western North Dakota is mostly barren, undeveloped grassland prairie.  The desolate landscape, very cold weather, and attitudes of the people here have helped to keep the entire population of the state of North Dakota below 800,000 people.

Regardless of whether North Dakota is inviting or not, there are several oil and natural gas formations about 6,000 feet underground, that caused an oil boom in the 1950s, late 1970s, and 2007 through 2014.  A couple hundred thousand people came to North Dakota to work in the 2007-2014 oil boom, at jobs that paid higher than average.

Meanwhile, during the North Dakota oil boom from 2007-2014, all across the U.S., there was the widespread complaint that college graduates with large student loan debt were unable to find employment in their field of study, good paying employment, or even any employment at all.  At this same time, many traditional Liberal Arts colleges were closing due to not being profitable.

Higher education in the U.S. is changing due to several factors.  More colleges and universities are offering online college course work because it is less expensive for many people because they don’t have to relocate to a college town, commute to a college town, or give up their normal 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job to attend classes.

Another factor that is changing higher education is that employers simply want people who are ready and capable to go to work for them.  Traditional four-year college Liberal Arts degrees in majors like English, History, Religion, Philosophy, Art, Political Science and Communications aren’t exactly what many employers are looking for, especially in industries like health care, manufacturing, oil and gas.

Dr. Thomas Mitzel was aware that many traditional Liberal Arts colleges were closing, online college course work was competing with traditional college classrooms, many college graduates with Liberal Arts degrees were unable to find employment, and that industries with high paying jobs like health care, manufacturing, oil and gas wanted applicants with technical training.

In order to save DSU, or perhaps to even cause DSU to grow and thrive, DSU could continue offering four-year Liberal Arts degrees, but at the same time begin offering technical training that was specifically what industries and employers wanted.  Dr. Mitzel had a meeting in Bowman, North Dakota where he explained what he had in mind.  Here are some quotations as reported by the Bowman County Pioneer newspaper in their article https://bowmanextra.com/2018/09/21/dsu-looking-to-become-polytechnic/

“We will always remain a Liberal Arts institution,” Mitzel said. “But becoming a Polytechnic dual mission would allow us also to be able to offer certificates and practical courses.”

Mitzel has had three meetings with a manufacturer strategic group — the last one lasting for five hours….where it was discussed, “What are some of the needs that they have? We really sat down and went over every industry that was there,” Mitzel said. “What was their workforce needs? And we tried to find common ground. We found about eight areas of common ground in education that they need, going over everything from a certificate to a two-year degree.”

Mitzel said the programs are going to be career focused based on what industries want. DSU will be emphasizing real-world applications. Mitzel’s goal is to see 100 percent of the students complete an internship before they graduated.  Mitzel said it doesn’t just help the student prepare to enter the workforce, but it also helps potential employers find suitable employees.

This Bowman County Pioneer newspaper article concluded with some statements about Dr. Mitzel’s continuing discussions with faculty and administrators on the DSU campus, and his expectation of making proposals to the North Dakota Board of Higher Education in the Spring of 2019.

After this newspaper article was published in September of 2018 announcing that DSU could become a polytechnic campus, I didn’t hear very much more about it.  I thought that this was an incredibly good idea, that would solve a whole bunch of problems at the same time:  increase enrollment at DSU; give DSU a unique mission and role in North Dakota; attract college applicants from all over the U.S. with its technical training; enable oil field workers to obtain higher level technical jobs; allow local recent high school graduates to obtain training for technical jobs in the oil field; allow local oil companies to participate in the education curriculum; and for DSU to receive additional funding from the oil and gas industry.

When I didn’t see announcements about DSU beginning to offer technical training in oil field technology such as instrumentation, automation, controls, and safety, I believed that the State of North Dakota had squashed Mitzel’s plans.

Just like the Governor of North Dakota helped to steer the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum away from the DSU campus and Dickinson, I believe that other people in North Dakota government did not want Dickinson State University to grow and prosper by becoming successful as a polytechnic school.

My belief is, that the State of North Dakota does not want Dickinson to grow, or DSU to grow, because it does not want state money to go to this area.  I partly understand this, because the people in Dickinson really do act bad in all kinds of ways, very primitive at times.

Why Companies Have Become Corrupt And Unethical

In my previous blog post, I wrote about going to a branch of Dakota Community Bank in Dickinson where I have a checking account, and asking a banker if someone stole a check out of my checkbook, forged my signature, and wrote out a check payable to themselves or someone else, would the Bank reimburse me when I discovered the money was missing from my account.  The banker replied, “No”.

I thought that I knew the law, but I wanted to see what banks in Dickinson thought the law was, and how they would handle fraudulent transactions on my account.  Though I was shocked at the banker’s response, I was afraid that that is what it would be.  I needed to know this, because now I know what to expect from this Bank if something goes wrong, denial of liability, and a fight with the Bank.

It turns out that banks are governed and regulated by a branch of the U.S. Department of the Treasury called “The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency” or the OCC for short.  The OCC says that banks are liable for reimbursement of forged checks, however there are a couple of pleas that banks use to try to get out of this liability.

In this blog post, I want to tell a story that was probably my first introduction to the institutional practice of large companies denying legal liability, in situations where they absolutely have legal liability, and their reasons for this tactic.

Almost twenty years ago, I was working for an elderly man who had at one time been the vice president of one of the largest commercial insurers in the U.S., I believe that he said it was USF&G.  One day, he wanted to tell me this story:

His company, USF&G, had a client whose parked vehicle was struck by a person driving another vehicle.  The parked vehicle was completely destroyed in the accident.  The driver of the other vehicle was insured, but his insurance company delayed and delayed paying for the damage.

At the vice president level, he did not normally handle the day-to-day business of individual accidents and insurance claims, but this particular case had risen through the different management levels at USF&G, because the other insurance company was delaying, refusing to pay for the damage to the USF&G client’s vehicle.

He got on the telephone with someone at or nearly at the level of vice president at the other insurance company and he said, “Look, you have no legal basis for not paying this claim, why won’t you pay this claim?”  The person at the other insurance company, with pride and satisfaction gave the following reply:

“We have found, that when there is an individual who is elderly in age, like your client, when there is an accident and they are owed money, if we delay and wait in paying the claim, often times they will die due to old age.”

The former vice president of USF&G said that the following day, a memorandum was issued to all departments at USF&G, stating that if anyone was ever caught trying to not pay a claim because the claimant was elderly in age, they would be out of a job.

Since hearing this story, I have read several newspaper stories over the years, where large banks and utility companies deny legal liability, because they have so many employees, so many millions in assets, and full time legal staff, that they feel that they don’t have to follow the law or treat customers in compliance with the law.

I have written before about newspaper stories where utility company customers enrolled in automatic bill pay have had all of the money taken out of their checking account for erroneous $10,000 water bills or electric bills.  The frantic customer contacts the utility company about the charges being a mistake, and explains that their normal water bill or electric bill is only $100 each month, how could they possibly have a $10,000 bill for the month?

In these cases, the utility company often sends the following response:  “Dear Customer, we have received your letter contesting the charges to your account.  We have conducted an internal investigation, and we can not find any error on our part.  The charges are correct, and are currently due.  Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.”

I have also written about newspaper stories where all of a bank customer’s money has been removed from their checking account through an erroneous debit card transaction, often for fuel at a gas station.  A debit for $8,000 worth of gasoline will appear on a customer’s account for one fuel stop at a gas station.  The customer will call the bank and explain that the charges are false, their vehicle fuel tank only holds $60 worth of gas.

In some cases, the gas station will side with the customer, saying that there is no way that this customer received $8,000 worth of gas, and the bank’s response is, “The charges have been approved, and they have gone through.  There is nothing that we can do at this time.”

Recently, a friend of mine who just turned sixty, he has been complaining to me about the tactics that he feels Sanford Health Care is using to deny him surgery.  About a year ago, he enrolled in Sanford Health Care medical insurance.  As part of this insurance plan, you are required to receive treatment at Sanford Health Care.

There are two different surgeries that he needs, he is almost always in pain due to his medical condition.  Though the medical doctors that have evaluated him, acknowledge that he has these specific medical problems that require surgery, he has been delayed and denied surgery.

When answering questions that the medical doctors have asked him, he did not know that they were seeking reasons to delay and deny him surgery.  In particular, they asked him, “How many days of work have you missed due to this medical condition?”  And he replied, “None”.

The reason why my friend replied none, is because he can’t miss work, he is not allowed to miss work.  I know the situation that my friend is in, and I know for a fact, without any doubt, that if he tried to not show up for work more than twice, that he would be out of a job.  The medical doctors took his response that he has missed no work, to mean that his condition does not require surgery at this time, when that is not the case at all, he is not allowed to miss work, and he is in pain all the time.

The other thing that my friend thinks that Sanford Health Care is doing to him, is delaying surgery in the hope and expectation that he will just die.

In the examples that I have just given about the banks, insurance companies, and utility companies, they have so many employees, so many millions of dollars in assets, and full time legal staff, that they are insulated and protected from caring, from guilt, from remorse, from responsibility, from personal legal liability and recourse.

The employees of these companies all go home at night and eat dinner, watch TV, and go to sleep without guilt, shame, or remorse, feeling no responsibility for taking all of someone else’s money, refusing to pay people money that they are owed, or denying people medical care that they need.  In fact, many of these employees are celebratory and proud of themselves for the money that they have saved their companies from paying, though legally they should have paid.

Getting The White Trash Treatment Again At Dakota Community Bank

To begin with, I want to say that all of the Bank Tellers at every Dakota Community Bank branch that I have been to, have always been very professional, competent, friendly, quick, and helpful.

Also, the several times that I have met and spoken to the Branch Manager at Dakota Community Bank, they have been professional, cordial, knowledgeable, and honest with me.

However, I don’t like it when I am given the “White Trash” treatment, being treated like I am a dumb, ignorant, uneducated, poor, know-nothing, which has happened to me twice at Dakota Community Bank.

The first time that this happened, was when I was opening a checking account with Dakota Community Bank a couple of years ago.  I was told that the Bank had to perform a credit check on me before I could open an account with them.  I was about 48 years old at the time, I currently had four different checking and savings accounts with three other banks, and I had never, ever, been told that I needed to have my credit checked in order to open an account at a bank.

At this time, when I was reading and selecting the options for this checking account with Dakota Community Bank, I asked, “This debit card, is this an additional service, or does this come with this checking account?”  The Bank employee said, “If you are denied for your checking account, you will be denied for the debit card too?”  That was not what I was asking, every other bank account that I had automatically provided an ATM/debit card with the account, I was trying to ask if this was a separate service, because this appeared to be called out separately.  I was insulted and angry about this talk of me being denied a checking account.

Today, I went into a Dakota Community Bank branch, to ask some questions about getting a safety deposit box.  I wanted to ask about box size, and fees, but I had other questions too.  I said to the Bank Teller that I wanted speak to someone in an office, I didn’t want to ask my questions out in the lobby where everyone could hear me.

In hindsight, I think that the person who I ended up speaking with, was probably the same woman that I was unhappy with two years ago when I opened my checking account, when I first received the “White Trash” treatment.

I explained that I had some questions.  Because I live by myself, I had gotten into the habit of leaving car titles laying out in my apartment, and leaving my checkbooks out in my apartment, not locked up.  Even though I had something that was large and heavy that I use as a safe, two people could probably carry it off, so even if I locked up my extra car keys, car titles, extra checkbooks, and cash, it could just be carried off when I wasn’t home.

I then asked a question about something that had been bothering me for a while.  I was afraid that banks would probably be dodgy and evasive in answering this question, and how they would handle the situation that I was going to ask about.  I asked, “If someone was in my apartment while I was at work, and they removed a check from the back of my checkbook where I would not notice, forged my name, and wrote out a check payable to themselves or someone else, would your Bank reimburse me for this loss when I discovered it?”  Her reply was “No”.

I was in disbelief, though I had feared that I would be given an answer like this from a bank.  When I took a Business Law class in high school, I am pretty sure that this is where I learned that banks are liable for forged checks.  I was also pretty sure that I had at one point looked up this law.

My belief and understanding was, that part of the banking industry practice, was to authenticate an account holder’s signature on checks, and that if a fraud was committed, the bank would assume liability, reimburse the erroneously paid funds to the account holder, and that the bank would pursue legal action against the person who perpetrated the fraud.  The bank is insured for this type of fraud, it is part of the cost of doing business, it has staff and expertise in discovering and pursuing this type of fraud.

I tried to explain that I had had the belief that banks were liable for forged checks, and that this was part of the FDIC insurance program that banks were enrolled in.  She replied, no, FDIC insurance only covers account holders when banks become insolvent.

This is what I was worried about, that banks and bank employees would try to deny that the bank was liable for forged checks, even though the law says otherwise.  Though I expected that this could happen, I didn’t know if it would be from ignorance of the law, or a deliberate attempt to deny liability, refuse to pay, stonewall the customer, wear him down, and make him give up.

I had for many, many years, left my checkbooks in my briefcase inside my vehicle when I went to work, went out to eat, and often overnight when my vehicle was parked out on the street.  I was confident that I would be reimbursed for stolen and forged checks.  However, I have seen so many wrong things going on in Dickinson and North Dakota, that I was suspicious about how banks and bank employees in Dickinson would handle stolen and forged checks.

Stop and think about this, if anyone at any time could get a blank check out of the middle of your checkbook, write a check and forge your name, and take all the money out of your checking or savings account, and the bank would not reimburse you for this theft when you discovered it, why would you even keep money in a checking or savings account?  Do you think that you as an individual would have any chance recovering the stolen money from the forger after it was spent?  This is what banks have a fraud department and insurance for.

When I got home, I looked up on the internet, “are banks liable for forged checks”, and eight out of the eight sites that I have looked at so far, say that yes, banks are liable for reimbursing account holders for forged checks.  Here are some sites that you can go look at and see for yourself:

https://pocketsense.com/liable-forged-checks-11972.html

https://budgeting.thenest.com/liable-forged-checks-24116.html

https://www.sapling.com/6190100/liable-forged-checks

Beware of Forged Signature on Checks

If you looked at and read any of the above links which are supposed to answer the question about banks being liable for forged checks, you would see that although banks are liable for reimbursing account holders for forged checks, banks can try the legal plea that they were “acting in good faith” and “used diligence” in order to try to get out of repaying account holders.

So what is the truth?  The truth is, that all national banks in the U.S. are governed and regulated by a branch of the U.S. Department of the Treasury called “The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency”:

“The OCC charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. The OCC is an independent bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.”

“To ensure that national banks and federal savings associations operate in a safe and sound manner, provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations.”

To find the absolute definitive answer to my question, the OCC answered this question on this link: https://www.helpwithmybank.gov/get-answers/bank-accounts/forgery-and-fraud/faq-banking-fraud-02.html :

Financial institutions are generally required to reimburse customers for forged checks. However, based on individual circumstances, the bank can investigate to determine if the customer is entitled to a reimbursement.

Whether the bank is liable for the customer’s loss depends on the specific circumstances of the case. Generally, a bank is liable for accepting a check that has been forged, altered, or improperly endorsed. However, if the bank can prove two things—that it accepted the check in good faith and exercised ordinary care and diligence in handling the transaction—it may not be liable.

If your actions—the way the check or checkbook was handled, issued, completed, or made payable—contributed to the making of the forgery, you may be at least partially liable. Generally, the bank will require you to complete an affidavit. It may also request that you file a police report.”

Further, if you have any problems with a bank failing to reimburse you for a forged check, no matter what the bank claims, the OCC wants you to contact them at Phone: (800) 613-6743.  I called this number and I spoke to an agent, even though I told the agent that I did not want to file a complaint against Dakota Community Bank at this time,  I just wanted to get some information, they still insisted that I give them all of my personal information and the bank name and location for their records.

Again, why is Dakota Community Bank treating me like stupid, ignorant, uneducated, poor, know-nothing White Trash, telling me that banks aren’t liable for forged checks?  This lets me know, that Dakota Community Bank is probably going to do everything it can to not reimburse customers for fraudulent transactions, regardless of what the law says.  You will probably have a fight on your hands with the Bank if anything goes wrong.

Unfortunately, what is happening with large companies now, whether they are insurance companies, utility companies, credit card companies, or banks, they will take all the money out of your account, allow all of the money to be taken out of your account, or fail to pay money that they owe you, and just laugh at you, because they are a large corporation with millions of dollars in assets and full-time attorneys on staff, and you are just an ordinary person, what can you do to them?  An individual could spend all of their time and money going through the legal system against a large company and not get anywhere.

Amazement And Enjoyment When People In Dickinson Get What Is Coming To Them

Though most people would think that it is perverse, sinister, and sick, that I get so much enjoyment out of bad things happening to people in Dickinson, I not only admit to it, I want to talk about it.

Never, ever in my life had I personally witnessed so much cruelty and hatred towards other human beings, as I saw and experienced in Dickinson, North Dakota during the oil boom that occurred from 2007 through 2014.

There is no where in the United States with more vacant, barren, undeveloped, unoccupied cheap land, than in the Dickinson area, but due to greed, wickedness, and evil in the hearts of people in Dickinson, there became a false and manipulated “housing shortage”, in order to fleece, extort, abuse, and take advantage of the people who came here for work.

The local people in Dickinson were mean and cruel to the out of state workers in just about every way.  As neighbors, co-workers, business owners, and landlords the local people in Dickinson were mean, hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, hateful, undermining, and sabotaging.

I relish, savor, rejoice, and give thanks when something very bad happens to people in Dickinson who did something to me.

In my mind, I keep a list of everything and everyone who has done something bad to me in Dickinson, and I check them off every time something bad happens to them.  I would like it even better if I created a written list to look at, of very bad things happening to people who did something to me:

D.S. – interfered with me having a place to live – dead

N.F. – interfered with me having a place to park my equipment – stroke, paralyzed

J.K. – interfered and endangered me at work – skull crushed

M.C. – interfered and endangered me at work – cancer

M.D. – interfered and undermined me at work – cancer

C.S. – interfered with me at work – lost business, left town, end of career here

J.M. – caused me problems at work – being sued for money, lose professional license

R.V. – interfered with me getting hired – arrested, lost job, publicly humiliated

K.H. – interfered with me at work – lost job, arrested, left town, publicly humiliated

E.D. – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town

D.C. – interfered with at work – lost job, left town, end of career here

R.R. – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town, end of career here

L.F. – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town

M.G. – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town, end of career here

W.H. – nasty/disrespectful to me at work – lost job, left town

H.W. – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town, end of career here

Steve ? – interfered with me at work – lost job

Kelly ? – interfered with me at work – lost job, left town, end of career here

I honestly and truthfully like it when bad things happen to people who did something to me.  I hope that more, and more, and more bad things happen to the people in Dickinson who deserve it.

I am not claiming that nothing bad will happen to me, it probably will.  However, regardless of what happens to me, I want to live and endure long enough to see everyone in Dickinson get what is coming to them.

I have wanted to do this for a couple of years, to list the specific terrible things that I want to happen to specific people in Dickinson, and perhaps I will write this list too.

Look For People With Phones Taking Pictures Of Your Property In Dickinson, North Dakota

In May through July of this year, I had to telephone the Police in Dickinson about seven times due to the theft or attempted theft of my property, or other people’s property in downtown Dickinson where I live.

What my neighbors noticed in June, was that people would walk beside our vehicles with their phone held out in front of them or beside them, taking pictures of what was inside our vehicles.

In late June, one of my neighbors got in his vehicle, and he tried to follow and take a photo of one of the people who was doing this, but he tried to turn away, and get away in order to not be photographed.  This particular person was arrested out on the street about three hours later for several different charges unrelated to the photographing of property inside people’s vehicles.

Since then, I have caught two other people photographing what was in the back of my truck or inside of my vehicle.  In July, one of these people was a young, plump, red haired girl that was about 14 years old that was out walking her small dog.  I was across the street sitting in my truck talking on the phone one evening, watching this girl walk around the corner and walk down the sidewalk, then she stopped at the back corner of my other vehicle, took her phone out, and began videoing what was inside this vehicle of mine.

I had to stop my phone call, quietly get out of my truck, crouch down below the roof of my other vehicle across the street, sneak over there, and when I stood up at the front corner of my vehicle, the very first thing that she did was try to hide her phone.  I was not mean to her, I explained to her that I had had my property stolen from my vehicle recently, why was she videoing what was in my vehicle?

I waited for her to walk away and around the corner, then I drove down a parallel street, until I could see what house it was that she returned to.  Was she spotting things to steal for an older brother, or do people pay kids to locate things to steal?

The second person that I caught videoing what was in my truck, was in late August.  Me and my neighbor were working on his car on one side of the street, and I looked over to see a skinny man about 27 years old, walking on the other side of the street where there is no sidewalk, walking in the street, passing just an inch beside each vehicle, with his phone held out in front of him, pointing inside of these vehicles.

No, he was not on his phone having a conversation.  No, he was not out getting some exercise.  I waited for him to get to the next corner, where he made a right turn to head east.  I got in my truck, and I followed him, staying about a block away.  At the very next corner he made a right turn, to head south.  When he got to the next corner, he saw me, and he stopped.

It appeared that he lived about one block away, whether it was the shitty house on the corner, or the apartment building across the street, I don’t know.  But he saw me, and he knew, that I knew what he was doing.

For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, people leave things in their vehicle:  phone, phone charger, music CDs, wallet, purse, laptop computer, camera, radar detector, tools, etcetera.  Rather than stand there for a minute looking through a car window at the dashboard, front seat, back seat, back window, and trying to determine what is there, what kind of stereo is there, what is it worth, is there a car alarm, the thief can just walk by with his phone and video everything in one pass.  He can look at the video later to see what is inside each vehicle.

It appears, that if the people who are doing this are spotted and followed, especially if they are followed all the way back to where they live, and they realize that they have been followed, they temporarily give up their theft plans for that route where they were caught.

Vote Fails For Funding New High School In Dickinson, North Dakota

On September 10, and previously on May 7 of 2019, voters in Dickinson overwhelmingly voted down a bond scheme to fund the construction of a new $89 million high school.

The main reason why people in the Dickinson area voted against building a new high school, is because it would have cost the average homeowner about $500 more per year in property taxes, and the average apartment dweller about $250 more per year in rent.

In general, the people in Dickinson are cheap, so cheap, that they would rather have repeat offender meth addict drug dealers and thieves running loose on the streets of Dickinson, than have to pay to keep them in prison where they belong.

I am glad that the vote for funding the construction of a new high school in Dickinson failed, because I want to see everyone in Dickinson get what is coming to them, after the way the people here treated the out-of-state workers during the oil boom.  No new school for you.

If you drive through the downtown main street of Belfield, New England, Richardton, Taylor, or Gladstone, this is what Dickinson would have looked like, had it not been for the oil boom, a ghost town.  And, this is what Dickinson will return to.

Even though I want Dickinson to whither and decay out of hatred, the local people in Dickinson want this same thing, only they think that it would be great if everyone moved away.

Besides me and the local people in Dickinson wanting everyone to move away from Dickinson, the Governor, North Dakota legislators, and everyone in Fargo, Jamestown, Grand Forks, and Bismarck would like everyone to move away from Dickinson too, so that the oil revenue money could be spent elsewhere, not wasted on services and infrastructure for the backwards, primitive, oil-field trash in Dickinson.

The blue-collar, oil-field trash in Dickinson will buy a $50,000 to $80,000 Ford or Dodge pickup, then go pay another $2,500 for big tires and wheels, they probably spend about $1,000 per year on cigarettes, but hell no they won’t pay $500 for a new high school.

Cutting Ties With Friends Who Are Too Much Trouble In Dickinson, North Dakota

I have had to cut ties with friends who are too much trouble, several times in Dickinson, North Dakota.  These friends were people who were always having problems, often because they used poor judgment, and they would frequently ask me for help, which began to make my life full of problems too.

I had to cut ties with my oldest and best friend in Dickinson this week, because he was always having problems, and trying to make his problems my problems too, like I owed him help and was obligated to help him.  I want to try to explain this.

In the winter of 2013, I was staying in my small trailer on a person’s property north of Dickinson, with electric hookup, but no water and no sewer hook up.  For people not familiar with the oil boom in North Dakota, housing was so scarce and expensive during the oil boom, that many people paid hundreds of dollars a month in rent to sleep in a tent in someone’s backyard.  Many people slept in their vehicles at Tiger Truck Stop or WalMart, even though they had full-time jobs, because rent was so expensive.

The person whose property I was staying on in my small trailer, he bought a diesel Ford F250 in December of 2013, and he began plugging its engine block heater power cord into the same electric power outlet that my small trailer was plugged into.  In the middle of the night when it got down to -20 degrees Fahrenheit, the electric panel breaker would trip, leaving me without power and without heat.

Across the open field that I was living on, was a residential neighborhood where I had met one of the homeowners while working for a contractor in Dickinson.  I asked this homeowner if I could park my small trailer in his yard, plug into his electric, and pay him rent.  This homeowner explained to me that he was on an equalized payment electric utility plan, and that this would disrupt his payment plan.  So I asked him if he had a spare bedroom to rent.

This homeowner who was in his late fifties, he was overweight and in bad health.  His yard and his house were full of clutter.  He currently did not have employment, he sold items on E-Bay to make money, and his house and each room were full of inventory.  We cleared out one of the two spare bedrooms for me to stay in, and I agreed to pay him $450 per month in rent.

This homeowner, I will call him “Danny”, though that is not his real name.  In “Danny”, I had found someone who was struggling financially, was in bad health, had no friends, no one to help him, and no one cared about him.  He appeared to be eager to have some additional income, some company, and someone to help him.

In the little over three years that I spent living in Danny’s home, I paid him over $18,000 in rent, about $2,000 in storage fees for equipment parked in his yard, and I paid him about $1,500 for helping me in my self-employed work.  This $21,500 was tax-free, unreported income for Danny.

While living with Danny, I found out more about his health problems and his personal problems.  He had not been employed anywhere for almost ten years.  Even though Dickinson had been going through the biggest oil boom that it had ever had since 2007, Danny had been unemployed during this time.

Beginning in 2014, when I became manager of a small company in Dickinson, I was able to get “Danny” hired to work with me for several months.  I had difficulty with Danny trying to get him to complete his employment application to become hired.  He was frustrated by the application and unwilling to make the effort to provide the documentation that was requested.  While going through this with him, I could see some of the problems that caused Danny to be unemployed for the previous ten years.

Danny did not listen to my instructions on how to get to the job site in Watford City or how long the drive took, and he was late to work his first day.  He also forgot his suitcase and he had to drive back to Dickinson after work to go back and get his suitcase.

Initially, Danny became lost in Watford City a couple of times, though Watford City was a small town with a population of about 10,000 people, with about two or three traffic lights in the entire town.  Danny became unglued after becoming lost, he became extremely nasty with me and the hotel owner where we were staying, when we tried to give him directions on the telephone.

Within a week or two, Danny proceeded to make a complaint about me as a manager and co-worker, in an attempt to get me fired, in order to possibly get his cousin in Watford City hired in my place, or to try to make himself manager, or just out of spite.  Unbeknownst to me, the owner of the hotel in Watford City had made a complaint about Danny’s behavior at the hotel to the owner of the company, and the owner of the company told me, that we were never hiring Danny again after this job was over.

It was difficult and frustrating living in Danny’s home, after I had done him the favor of getting him hired to work with me, he had caused me a lot of trouble at work and he had tried to get me fired.  For those of you not familiar with North Dakota, it is very common for North Dakotans to try to get their out-of-state co-workers fired, because they are not from here.  I don’t know what Danny was thinking.

After living with Danny for a while, I could see that he did not have any friends, his brothers and sisters did not want to visit him or talk to him, his neighbors did not want to interact with him, and no one wanted to help him.

Because Danny’s personality was sometimes a “know-it-all”, sometimes arrogant, sometimes belligerent, I could see why he did not have any friends, his brothers and sisters did not want to visit or talk to him, his neighbors did not want to interact with him, and he had had difficulty obtaining or keeping employment.  The other thing that kept people away, was that Danny was always trying to get people to help him.

I learned from reading court records on the internet, that Danny had declared bankruptcy about twice.  He had had surgeries that were paid for by social services and other charitable organizations, but unemployment during these times left him with bills that he was unable to pay, so he declared bankruptcy.  He still had outstanding court judgments against him that had not been paid, after his bankruptcies.

I wondered if his neighbors and other people that Danny had had interaction with, had the opinion of Danny, that he was always trying to get something for nothing.  It appeared that they had this opinion.  Not just because of declaring bankruptcy in the past, or having health problems and wanting help, or recovering from surgery and wanting help, but always trying to get people to help him with something.

In 2016, the small company that I was the manager of in Dickinson, it was not very busy, and I was able to get outside employment in Watford City on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Partly to help Danny, and partly to get someone to work the rest of the week for me in Watford City on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I again got Danny hired to work with me.

Danny caused me some difficulty at first when he started working in Watford City, because he was not doing what we were hired to do.  But after I got mad at him and told him that he wasn’t doing what we were being paid to do, he did what he was supposed to.  This job in Watford City earned Danny about $48,000 over the next thirteen months.

The $21,500 that I had paid to Danny as unreported tax-free income, the $8,000 that he got paid from working with me in Watford City the first time, the $48,000 that he got paid from working with me in Watford City the second time, was more money than Danny had made in his previous nearly ten years of unemployment.  And as a result of having some money now, in some ways Danny became more of an asshole.

Because Danny had money now, because of me paying him rent and getting him hired to work with me, Danny became more of an asshole, more arrogant, more loud-mouthed, and more belligerent.  He didn’t really need me as a roommate anymore, and he was obnoxious.  I moved out of his house in the Spring of 2017 because Danny was so offensive and belligerent.

For the next year and a half, after I had moved out of Danny’s house, Danny was unemployed, he could not get a job, and he did not have any income.  I learned that he was unable to pay his home owners insurance, nor his property tax which he was already in arrears.  He was selling his personal belongings to survive.

In the late summer of 2018, I got Danny hired to work with me again, because I knew that he was about to lose his home for non-payment of property taxes.  Even though Danny had caused me problems at work before, and Danny had caused me problems when I was living in his home, I still felt like I should help him, because he had helped me back in the Winter of 2013 when I needed a place to stay.

After Danny had worked with me for about four months, he was complaining that he should be paid more money.  He was complaining about wanting more money, after he had been caught and photographed sleeping while on the job several times, and he was close to being fired for cause.

After Danny had made about $30,000 working with me, he was buying new windows for his house and he was talking about buying a new truck.  After he had made about $40,000, he was talking about re-roofing his house.

In the past several months, I have had to come and give Danny a tow in his broken vehicle from downtown Dickinson back to his home twice.  A couple of weeks ago I drove a trailer to go pick up and load by hand 3,500 lb of roofing shingles for Danny’s house.

In this same time period, for some insane reason, Danny told some Mexican guy who I don’t know who recently got arrested, that I would give him a ride two hours one way to go pick up his vehicle.  And, Danny told some woman who doesn’t have any money that I would sell her one of my vehicles.

I got onto to Danny for telling these two people that I do not know that I would give them a ride two hours away or sell them one of my vehicles when they do not have any money.  I asked him what was he thinking, why was he trying to cause me problems?

For the past several months, Danny has been complaining about having difficulty and no one wanting to help him put in his new windows, replace the roof on his house, fix the furnace in his basement, or perform hip surgery on him.  His neighbors, his brothers, tradespeople, the doctors, me, we don’t want to help him because we already have helped in the past, he always wants help, and he always wants something for nothing.

A few days ago Danny was being very belligerent on the phone with me and complaining that no one wants to help him.  I told him that I was about ready to refuse to help him anymore, after I had loaded the 3,500 lbs of roofing shingles for him onto his trailer.  Danny said, ” Oh, I know, you never want to help me with anything.”

I can’t understand how Danny can be so stupid as to not recognize how many times that I have helped him.  I suppose that it is too painful for him to admit or acknowledge that without my help he would have never had employment income and rent income, and he would have lost his house and been living in a public assistance housing project apartment by now.

But this is the way that people are.  Because just about everyone that I have become friends with in Dickinson has acted this way, I have had to cut ties with everyone of my friends in Dickinson.  I don’t have the energy or resources to allow other people to try to make their problems my problems too.

The Joy Of Seeing More People Get What Is Coming To Them In Dickinson, North Dakota

I don’t like living in Dickinson, North Dakota.  There is no where to go, nothing to do, a scarcity of attractive women, terrible drug crime, and I can’t even drive to work without getting stopped by the Police.  I am sick, miserable, and angry most of the time, way more so than what my blog posts indicate.

The only joy and happiness that I get, is seeing these mother fuckers in Dickinson get what is coming to them.  I want to share my latest happy news.

The company that I am employed with, has performed work at a large industrial site outside of Dickinson for approximately the past six years.  During some of these past six years, we have sometimes been the only contractor on this site.

In July of 2018, the owner of this industrial site informed us that work at this site was going to pick up significantly, to watch for other contractors and owner’s representatives arriving on site.  In late July I saw an older man ride a Harley Davidson motorcycle onto this site, and I stopped him to ask him who he was.  He introduced himself as “Henry”, and he identified himself as the site owner’s representative, and the project manager for this site.  ( I am not using this person’s real name.)

I informed my co-workers and the owner of the company that I worked for, that the project manager of the site owner, “Henry”, was now on site.  Henry had some directives to pass along to us, such as we were not going to be permitted to use the on-site office trailer that we had been using for the past several years, and other miscellaneous instructions.

There was a problem, the owner of the company that I worked for, he was not getting the same information from owner of this industrial site, that I was getting from Henry, who had told me that he was the owner’s representative and the project manager of this site.

At the very last minute, my co-worker and I found out that there was a new general contractor coming onto this site to take over all operations, and that this new general contractor had let out for bid, the work that our company had been performing at this site for the past six years.

It turned out, that Henry was not really this site owner’s representative, nor was he the project manager of this site.  I don’t know if it was Henry’s ego, or if he believed that he would somehow benefit from trying to lead us to believe that he was the project manager, with more authority and importance than he actually had.  Because my co-worker and I believed that Henry was the owner’s representative and project manager, we were relying on him to tell us what we needed to know, however he did not tell us the most important thing, that the work we performing was being let out for bid.

The owner of our company was able to provide a proposal to the new general contractor of this site at the last minute, and we were awarded the work over other companies that had already been asked to provide proposals.  However, I believed that Henry, through his charade, had almost cost us the contract and our jobs.  Or, maybe he was deliberately trying to sabotage us?

Henry continued to work at this site in an administrative capacity, without very much authority.  I found out that Henry actually worked for a personnel company, he was not even an employee of the site owner.  Henry did not seem to contribute anything, supervise anything, offer his opinion, have any input in the work, or do very much work.  He seemed to try to keep out of the way, and perform some clerical duties.

One day when I was not at this job site, a certain employee received a set of four tires on a shipping pallet at this site for his personal vehicle.  My co-workers were shocked, because this was insane.  I will explain why.

Once the new general contractor took over this site, this site became very busy and crowded.  Some very strict procedures and rules were established to minimize the risk of accidents.  Only employees were allowed on site, and they were only allowed to move around on the site after they had gone through orientation.  When a crane was lifting something, all vehicles and personnel in the area had to stop and not proceed until the crane lifting operation was completed.

When any delivery came to this site, the delivery had to be stopped and held at the site entrance.  An escort vehicle had to be called, a laborer/spotter/flagger had to be called, a telehandler operator had to be called, a supervisor had to come out and inspect the delivery, and a safety person or two would come out to watch all of this.  Crane lifting operations had to cease while the delivery was unloaded.

Can you imagine an escort vehicle, laborer/spotter/flagger, telehandler operator, supervisor, and a couple of safety people being taken from what they were doing, crane lifting operations ceased, to unload a delivery, and it turns out to be four truck tires on a shipping pallet for some site worker’s personal vehicle?

The next time that this happened, I wouldn’t let the truck driver come onto this site when I found out that all he had was a Jeep bumper on a shipping pallet.  I said that we are not going through all of this for something that has nothing to do with this site, we are unloading this Jeep bumper right here, and the truck driver agreed, as he didn’t want to go through all of this either.

A laborer/spotter/flagger, telehandler operator, supervisor, and two safety people came over to get in on this delivery and ask why I wasn’t letting it on site.  I explained that it was a personal delivery of a Jeep bumper, that had nothing to do with this site, and that we weren’t taking five people to do this.

This turned into a dispute of sorts, as the truck driver and I placed the shipping pallet on the ground at the site entrance.  A couple of the people present had the opinion, let’s treat all deliveries the same way, just as if they were delivery of site equipment.  I disagreed.

At this time, “Henry” emerged from the office trailer, and he announced, “Me and my people, we have all got JC Whitney catalogues on our desks, we are going to continue to order parts, and we all have more parts coming.”

I got into trouble for the angry argument that I instigated, insisting that we are not going to treat personal deliveries of miscellaneous items, as if they were site equipment, taking five people, and ceasing crane lifting operations, to unload a set of four tires or a Jeep bumper.  Why are you even allowing site personnel to do this, this is wasting everyone’s time?

About one month later, “Henry” and all of his people with JC Whitney catalogues, they were all let go from this site on the same day.  Henry was telling everyone that he was being reassigned to Arkansas.

Yesterday, I looked Henry up on the internet, and I saw his LinkedIn resume.  He has been unemployed for the past ten months, ever since he got let go from this site.  Good, fuck him, he got what was coming to him, stupid fucker.

Lack Of Understanding Of Law, Makes North Dakota A Bad Place To Live

The lack of understanding of law, makes North Dakota a bad place to live.

Recently, I looked at an employment application that was given to two friends of mine.  Three of the questions on this application were very troubling, but I will discuss just two of these questions:

“Have you been convicted of any charge as a juvenile, that you would have been convicted of if you were an adult?”  If yes, explain.

“Have you ever received disciplinary action, or a complaint?”  If yes, explain.

And, “I hereby swear that all of the answers on this application are true and complete.  I understand that failure to answer these questions or untrue answers are grounds for immediate dismissal.”

Addressing the question about convictions as a juvenile, first of all, in most states, juvenile records are sealed and not available to the public.  Second, in most states after a period of time juvenile records are destroyed and “must be treated as if it never occurred“.

Let me just cite the North Dakota Century Code:

27-20-51. Inspection of court files and records.
1. Except as provided in this section, all files and records of the juvenile court, whether in the office of the clerk of district court or juvenile court, of a proceeding under this chapter are closed to the public. Juvenile court files and records are open to inspection only by: ……(long list of court officials)

27-20-54. Destruction of juvenile court records. (Effective through December 31,
2019)
1. Except as otherwise required under section 25-03.3-04, all juvenile court records must be retained and disposed of pursuant to rules and policies established by the North Dakota supreme court.
2. Upon the final destruction of a file or record, the proceeding must be treated as if it never occurred.

When are juvenile court records destroyed in North Dakota?  According to the North Dakota Supreme Court Administrative Rule 19:

Juvenile Delinquency (94) – 500419  Retain for 10 years after expiration of final order, or age 18, whichever is later. Dispose by shredding.

The summary of the North Dakota law on criminal offenses committed as a juvenile, is that these records are sealed to the public, and after ten years these records are destroyed, and must be treated as if it never occurred.

So why would an employer in North Dakota be asking an employee to disclose information which North Dakota law says that it should be treated “as if it never occurred”?  Some answers are, that the employer is an asshole, the employer is ignorant of the law, the employer does not care about the law, the employer doesn’t care about violating the law, or, this is North Dakota.

The second question on this application which is troubling, “have you ever received disciplinary action or a complaint?”  What, disciplinary action or a complaint from a parent, teacher, spouse, child, neighbor, co-worker, bystander, bartender, police, court, IRS, or employer?  This employer would probably answer “Yes”.

To the reader who would respond with the statement, well you don’t have to work for this employer if you don’t like this application.  The problem is, this application was for employment in a position like a nurse, engineer, firefighter, or pilot where there is education, training, certification, or a degree, and this application could bar you from employment in your occupation or field as a nurse, engineer, firefighter, etc.

My recommendation would be, that an employee not disclose personal information to an employer that could bar them from employment or cause problems, if this information has been sealed from the public, expunged, destroyed, or is private and unlikely to ever be disclosed.

In an ideal World, a more fair World, an employee would have the right to give an employer an “Employer Application” with equally absurd questions, and to conduct a bi-annual “Employer Review” where suggestions could be made for improvement, or notification could be given that the employer was not meeting expectations.

A Definitive Answer On Why There Is So Much Crime In Dickinson, North Dakota

I am sick of writing about the crime in Dickinson, North Dakota, and you are probably tired of reading about it.  I began to find the definitive answer on why there is so much crime in Dickinson, but I hesitated to write about it, because I thought that it would be too difficult to explain, though the answer is simple.

I am going to refer readers to a series of recent articles, presented by the Dickinson Press newspaper, sponsored by the North Dakota Newspaper Association, where one of their journalists, Sam Easter, did a very thorough investigation on why there is so much crime in North Dakota.  This journalist presented all of the facts and figures, but he didn’t shout the answer or conclusion loud enough, maybe he wasn’t permitted to do so because of the political implications.  (refer to this link https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/news/crime-and-courts/4046635-Too-big-too-fast-North-Dakota’s-other-housing-problem, at the bottom of this article there is a link to all of the articles in this series.)

Here is the answer:  In the late 1990s, the state of North Dakota made a deliberate transition from consistent stiff incarceration penalties for drug crimes and theft, to less incarceration penalties and more probation for offenders.  The fact is, it costs the state of North Dakota about $43,000 per year to incarcerate an offender, versus about $1,700 per year to put an offender on probation.

These very high-up people in North Dakota government, like the Governors, Attorney Generals, and State Legislators, they tried to present to North Dakotans, that there needed to be more money spent on prisons.  The North Dakotans were, unsurprisingly, too cheap and pinch-penny to want to spend more money on prisons.

In order to remain popular, and to get re-elected, the Governors, Attorney Generals, and State Legislators, they never came out and said, “Listen you dumb sons-of-bitches, if you don’t spend this money to build new prisons, you are going to be overrun with crime and criminals in your communities.”

Instead, the Governors, Attorney Generals, State Legislators, Judges, and Prosecuting Attorneys have implemented this “Probation for Everyone” policy, knowing full well that the communities would become overrun with criminals.  Their belief was probably that once the ordinary citizens became tired of dealing with so much crime and so many criminals every day, that it would come to the point where North Dakotans would ask for more prisons to be built.

The Governors, Attorney Generals, State Legislators, Judges, Prosecuting Attorneys, Probation Officers, and Police Officers know why there is so much crime in Dickinson, North Dakota, but the problem is that the ordinary citizens don’t know.

The prisons in North Dakota are currently completely full, because new prisons have not been built.  Because the prisons in North Dakota are full, with no room for additional prisoners,  people who are convicted of drug crime and theft in North Dakota are given very little jail time, and probation.

Many of the Probation Officers in North Dakota have as many as 130 offenders to supervise on probation, because probation is given rather than incarceration.  The Police in Dickinson have seen for years, that they can successfully arrest someone for possession of methamphetamine and possession of stolen property, the offender is released from jail on bail, the Police arrest this same offender again for another possession of meth and stolen property while they are out on bail awaiting trial, and in the end, this offender only ever spends a month total in jail, and gets probation.

When I looked up the person who stole my truck in 2017 on the North Dakota Court Repository, he should have still been in prison for an arson charge, while he was out committing multiple felony thefts, and he should have been in prison for these multiple felony thefts, while he was out stealing my truck.  He was out of prison on probation, while he was caught in possession of stolen property, and he was out on bail for this possession of stolen property, when he stole my truck.

I e-mailed a judge who had adjudicated many of this thief’s criminal cases over the years to ask him why he kept suspending most of this person’s prison sentences, when this person kept repeating and repeating felony thefts again and again over the past twenty years, and this judge was outraged, and he told me to go ask the prosecutor.

If you read the Dickinson Press newspaper “Police Blotter” or “Crime and Courts” articles, and go look up the people named who have been charged with theft and possession of illegal drugs using the North Dakota Court Repository on the internet, you will almost always find that they are currently on probation for a previous charge of theft and possession of drugs, and in many cases they are currently out on bail awaiting trial for a previous arrest for theft and possession of drugs.

The Police in Dickinson arrest the same several hundred people for theft, possession of drugs, and drug dealing, over and over again, multiple times each year, because these offenders are not being incarcerated, they are being let out of jail almost immediately right back into Dickinson.  Also, these repeat offenders have no fear of committing crime in Dickinson because their punishment is so lenient.

Another Reason Why Dickinson, North Dakota Is A Prison Work Camp, Lack Of Medical Care

In my previous blog post I wrote that Dickinson, North Dakota is a prison work camp because I keep getting stopped by the Police.  In the past two years, I have been stopped by the Police in Dickinson, more than in my entire previous forty-eight years of life.

Another reason why Dickinson, North Dakota is a prison work camp, is because of the lack of medical care.

In 2014-2015, the old St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown Dickinson was closed and the new St. Alexius Hospital on the west side of Dickinson was opened.  Though the new St. Alexius Hospital cost approximately $75-$100 million to construct, it is an empty shell, a facade, and a sham, in several different ways.

For instance, if anyone with a serious medical condition arrives at the new St. Alexius Hospital in Dickinson, the hospital staff won’t hesitate to put that patient on the 100 mile, $40,000 helicopter ride to Bismarck, because they know that they aren’t capable of handling this patient with the medical staff and equipment that they have here.  Knowing this, many people in southwest North Dakota travel directly to Bismarck in an emergency, even though Dickinson is 100 miles closer.

What is wrong with the new St. Alexius Hospital, the equipment, and the medical staff?  This great big sprawling facade of a building, was meant to be a monument to the Catholic Church, just like a cathedral.  Rather than using the construction money for necessity, functionality, and efficiency in a medical building, they built a great big hollow temple monument.

The great big sprawling empty facade St. Alexius Hospital besides being a monument to the Catholic Church, was also a jobs program for the Catholic Church.  “Good Catholics” from the Catholic School system were awarded administrative jobs, though they held no degree in business administration, nor healthcare.  Nurses, who had nasty dispositions and an unfriendly manner, who would never be hired elsewhere, filled most of the nursing positions at the St. Alexius Hospital because they were local Catholics.

Medical Doctors, who can see what Dickinson is like, see what the St. Alexius Hospital administrators are like, and see what the St. Alexius Hospital nurses are like, take a pass on working in Dickinson, unless they have gotten into trouble elsewhere and don’t have any choices left.  Even the medical doctors with a troubled past don’t stay in Dickinson very long.

Most local people in Dickinson know better than to go to the St. Alexius Hospital in Dickinson.  They choose to go to Bismarck if they think that have something seriously wrong, or they go to Sanford Health in Dickinson if they think that their condition is not a severe emergency that requires driving to Bismarck.

Even though the medical staff, nurses, and doctors at Sanford Health are at a much higher professional level than the Catholic jobs-program staff at the St. Alexius Hospital, Sanford Health is a get-em-in and get-em-out quick type of operation, not at all like seeing a traditional family practice medical doctor who wants to know and understand his patients.

When I have needed medical care in Dickinson, I have found that I was shit-out-of-luck.  When I had a sudden, fast growing mole appear on my back, which looked and acted like a carcinoma, I couldn’t get an appointment with a dermatologist in North Dakota, not even in Bismarck, any sooner than six months.  I had to drive 750 miles one-way to Idaho in order to see a dermatologist the following week, who examined this mole, and froze it off for $100.

I have had severe allergy attacks in North Dakota, where my eyes swell shut and are so sensitive to light that I can not see.  I explained to the medical doctor that I saw at the Sanford Health clinic that my allergy attacks are so severe, that I thought that I needed something like epinephrine, which people who are allergic to bee stings use.

This young lady medical doctor was working as a “locum tenens”, a temporary doctor used to fill a staff shortage.  Her home was in Florida.  She didn’t understand what I was saying, she didn’t know what I was talking about, and she prescribed me some useless medication that didn’t work, that cost over $200 to cover only one or two allergy attacks.  She made some remark about “when I see my primary care physician”, because she was too young and dumb to know that this is it, this is all that there is in North Dakota, this visit with her is all the medical care that I am going to get in North Dakota.

Last week, I had an allergy attack that was so bad, not only did my eyes swell shut to where I could not see, I began to have trouble breathing, and I didn’t know if I was going to die.  In a panic because I began to not be able to breathe, I was about to call an ambulance, but I didn’t want to go to the St. Alexius Hospital because those fucking ham-fisted, fat, scowling, battle-axe, bitch Catholic women would only make it worse.  Stupid fuckers would take my blood and try to make me have a CT-scan or MRI, just to pay for their machine, even though I was having an allergic reaction.

Dickinson, North Dakota Is A Prison Work Camp

After six years of living in Dickinson, North Dakota, the best way to describe it, is that it is a prison work camp.  I want to begin this blog post by telling about my most constant reminder that I am in prison.

When I was living in Florida and got my driver’s license when I was sixteen years old, to when I moved away from Florida when I was thirty-two years old, in those sixteen years, I was stopped by the Police a total of three times.  The three times that I was stopped, I was speeding.  In those sixteen years, I commonly drove over the speed limit, and I often went out to bars until 2:00 a.m. on Friday and Saturday night.

From when I was thirty-two years old to forty-two years old, living in Colorado, Arizona, and Idaho, I was stopped by the Police a total of two times.  Once for speeding in Arizona, and once for a truck headlight being out in Idaho.

In comparison to being stopped twice by the Police in ten years of living in Colorado, Arizona, and Idaho, I have been stopped by Law Enforcement in North Dakota twice in the past thirty days.

In comparison to being stopped three times by the Police in sixteen years of living in Florida, I have been stopped by Law Enforcement in North Dakota more than three times in this past year.

In the past two years of living in North Dakota, I have been stopped by Law Enforcement more times than in my previous thirty-two years of driving.

I dread going anywhere in North Dakota, especially just going to the grocery store, going to work, or coming home from work.  In the past thirty days, while I was driving at the speed limit, not doing anything wrong, Law Enforcement that was travelling in the opposite direction, has made a U-turn after passing me, in order to come after me.

What Law Enforcement is trying to do, is stop me, ask me questions, and look in my vehicle in order to get me for something.

Every two or three days, the Dickinson Press newspaper has an article titled “Police Blotter” or “Crime & Courts”.  In these articles that are published every two or three days, there are typically ten to fifteen individuals named who have been charged with the following:

“…driving while license suspended, failure to carry liability insurance, possession of meth (misdemeanor), possession of meth paraphernalia (felony)…”

Dickinson has a horrible methamphetamine problem, and along with it, a terrible theft problem too.  I have had to call the Police on May 28, June 6, June 15, and June 25 regarding theft where I live in downtown Dickinson.

I understand what Law Enforcement is doing in North Dakota, trying to deal with and stop the methamphetamine and theft problem, by stopping motorists who appear to be just ordinary workers.  Law Enforcement is not making a U-turn on Villard Street to come after anyone in a new Ford F150, new Chevy 1500, new Dodge 1500, or new Suburban, lest they irritate or inconvenience someone who matters.

Most of the people in Dickinson are uneducated blue-collar workers, laborers, construction workers, welders, plumbers, electricians, equipment operators, truck drivers, and fair game to be pulled over by Law Enforcement at any time, because they are probably drunk, high, or driving on a suspended license.

Living here in Dickinson, is far, far from normal, and like no place else that I have ever lived, except for another oil field town in Texas.  There is very little to do here in Dickinson, and nowhere to go.  The women here are ugly, ugly, ugly, and mean.  No normal women will stay here.  And prostitution in not allowed.

You are just an inmate here in Dickinson, and you have to understand that this place is a prison work camp.  I understand what Law Enforcement is trying to do, but I am so tired of living like a black convict in a prison labor camp.