Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/rich-st-john/page/2/)
Billings Police Chief Rich St. John and longtime activist Eran Thompson agree on one thing: Billings needs more cops. They both see true community policing, which gives cops a chance to interact in a meaningful way with the people they serve, as the best way to close the divisions separating communities and police departments across the country. And good community policing takes more cops on the street than Billings has. (more…) Continue Reading →
The Montana Department of Justice has issued a sanction letter to the Billings Police Department in response to a police officer’s personal use of the state’s Criminal Justice Information Network. The letter to Police Chief Rich St. John from Jennifer Viets, CJIN program manager, gives the department 30 days to document what steps have been taken to ensure that there are no further CJIN violations. (more…) Continue Reading →
Billings police Officer Grant Morrison, who was reprimanded for being cited by Laurel police for keeping pot-bellied pigs at his home and who recently pleaded not guilty to a state charge of possessing unlawfully captured deer fawns, has also been reprimanded for wrongfully obtaining criminal justice information for his private use. A “corrective action form” issued to Morrison in September, and obtained by Last Best News in a public information request, said the officer was given a written reprimand after seeking information for private use from the Criminal Justice Information Network and the National Crime Information Center. (more…) Continue Reading →
Walking into two small rooms in the basement of an office building on the 700 block of Central Avenue in Billings, you’d never guess they house “the highest court in the land, on the earth.”
That’s how Cecil DeLabio described The Tacit Supreme In Law Court, of which he is The Chief Justice. He shares the office space with Ted Shinneman, who is the court’s Senior Chief Justice. (more…) Continue Reading →
A Billings police officer who was found to have committed justifiable homicide in two fatal shootings in two years is now the subject of an internal investigation by the Billings Police Department. Police Chief Rich St. John said Officer Grant Morrison is being investigated after an anonymous complainant said Morrison has routinely been violating city codes in Laurel, where he lives with his family. (more…) Continue Reading →
Four months after 21-month-old Zachary Wyles was run over and killed in a parking lot in Billings, his family thinks justice is a long way from being served. The toddler’s parents, Zachary Sr. and Aleada Wyles, recently filed a civil lawsuit against Jamie Van Atta, the woman who was driving the truck that ran over the boy, and the owners and managers of the Rose Park Plaza Apartments on the 2300 block of Avenue C, where the incident occurred. (more…) Continue Reading →
At this time of year in downtown Billings, Matt Lennick’s phone should be ringing a lot more than it has been. Lennick, a downtown resource officer who works for the Police Department but whose pay is covered by a special tax on downtown property owners, said he’s still waiting to see statistical comparisons between this year and last, but this year sure feels different. (more…) Continue Reading →
Eight times a year, on average, the Billings Police Department deploys its Special Weapons and Tactics team, 12 officers wearing heavy armor and toting semiautomatic and automatic weapons. In almost all cases, they are executing high-risk search warrants at the homes of suspected drug dealers, and they roll up in the BEAR, the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Department’s 35,000-pound Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicle. (more…) Continue Reading →
Mike and Alex Gregory have been running Oxford Antiques at 2411 Montana Ave. for 33 years, dating back to the days when the avenue was studded with empty storefronts and an abandoned train depot overrun with pigeons and transients. (more…) Continue Reading →
Carol Kraft is looking forward to Tuesday morning. The police are supposed to show up first, about 8 a.m., to roust anyone still squatting in the two vacant houses at 115 N. 22nd St. Then, about 9:30, Cayton Excavation is supposed to start demolishing the two houses and a burnt-out shed. (more…) Continue Reading →
