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• Rod Pettigrew, chair of the Library Board, said an arrest had been made at the library earlier this month by U.S. Marshals of a man with a child pornography conviction.
• The private security company, Black Hills Patrol, reported observing a pattern of "suspicious activity" that could have involved drug dealing.
• Mayor Sam Kooiker said he had "serious concerns" about public safety at the library, and told the Journal that all of the library's security guidelines were insufficient.
• On the same day that the board voted to add a police liaison, library director Greta Chapman submitted her resignation to work for the South Dakota Hall of Fame.
• What was going on at the library that prompted a second change to its security policies?
• The city's library system sees 1,500 users every day, many of whom are children, whose parents entrust the library staff for their safety. Yet we learned after the Feb. 21 shooting that library staff had called police 184 times in 2012, or about once every other day.
• We are concerned that the security problems at the library are being swept under the rug by the city and police department that expect the public to trust them with their safety without providing information about what the problems were.
• We applaud the library board and city government for responding to a potential threat to public safety by taking action to increase security at the downtown library.
• However, the public has a right to know what activities were going on at the library that prompted the security change, and if the activities were illegal.
• We believe Rapid City residents -- and parents whose children use the public library system -- deserve a full accounting of the safety issues that resulted in the addition of a police liaison at the downtown library.
• ___
• Capital Journal, Pierre, May 19, 2013
• Texting ban makes sense for Pierre, too
• Mitchell has become the latest in a growing number of South Dakota cities that have now enacted bans on texting while driving. That 4-3 decision by its city council last week puts Mitchell in the company of Sioux Falls, Brookings, Watertown, Vermillion and Huron in implementing local bans.
• Pierre should do likewise.
• As we have already seen in the letters people have written to the Capital Journal over the past year, texting is a safety issue that affects people in our city as well. There have been near misses in our city in which people or their pets were nearly

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