Storm Creates Unique Issue for Law Enforcement

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Grady to have Douglas County Sheriff AaronHanson with us for a few minutes.
Aaron, good morning. I mentionedthat there are people always that try to
take advantage of these situations you havemade, your department has made arrests already,
right, yeah, we have Garygood morning morning. Hey. First
of all, real quick, bigshout out to all the first responders and

(00:20):
volunteers, dispatchers, deputies, policeofficers, firefighters. Amazing work on Friday
and over the weekend. But yeah, absolutely we knew that there was going
to be a lot of vulnerable peoplein certain parts of Douglas County, especially
unincorporated Douglas County, and shut outthe governor Pillon. He and I assessed
some of the damage. He goes, what do you need? I go,

(00:41):
I need troopers, and he goes, well, we'll send him your
way. And so, working withNebraska State Patrol, we put stationary points
around those areas that we knew werehigh risk of theft, and sure enough,
last night a couple of my deputiesheads up, smart deputies. They
found two guys, two ne'er Dowells, skulking around the neighborhood around two hundred

(01:03):
and sixteenth and fort checked them.They lied about who they were. Of
course, they had meth on them, one of them did, and burglar
tools as well as some items thatwe suspect to be stolen. So one
of them went to jail for theburglar tools and the meth. We're following
up on the investigation to see whowas victimized. But here's my message,
and I know a lot of theseburglars are not awake at eight eighteen in

(01:25):
the morning. Don't even try it, folks. We're ready. We're protecting
these neighborhoods. If you come outand try to steal from people, if
you try to victimize these people,you're going to get caught. You're going
to go to jail. Take meat my word on this. So I
assume these are neighborhoods that have beenheavily damaged but not destroyed. In other

(01:48):
words, what are they trying tosteal. Well, in this case,
these individuals were stealing what we suspectwas stolen copper, and so they're looking
to scrap anything. Go into theseneighborhoods. They'll look to either steal from
the contractors that are actively trying towork on let's say the OPPD lines.

(02:08):
We suspect that they may have beenthe victim in this case. But these
thieves, we'll go into the neighborhood. They'll try to take anything they can
if they think it's a value,if they think they can get away from
it. So you know, wehad a ton of HLA leaders in that
area. Mayor of Bennington reach outto us and say, look, what

(02:29):
help can we get in this area, and again really thankful to stay patrol,
to step up and partner with mypeople to get that done well.
And then there's also that collection ofsmiling assassins as I like to call them.
These are the people that rolled intotown Promise to fix your roof,
Promise to fix your house. Don'tworry, I'll take care of all of
the permitting. You just give mea holder's fee of fifteen hundred dollars or

(02:50):
two thousand dollars and we'll make you. We'll put you in first place.
How can people recognize those guys,Sheriff? Well, first of all,
it's funny you mentioned that I'm incommunication with a commissioner, Mike Friend.
There is a little known state statutethat does allow counties to pass ordinances one
of those areas that county boards canpass ordinances on is those peddlers, similar

(03:15):
to what we have in the Cityof Omaha through city ordinance, and so
we're going to work with the countyboard to see if we can get these
peddlers registered, get an ordinance toget them registered. That will give us
the enforcement ability to separate wheat fromshaff, to make sure that only people
that are legally coming to people's doorshave to show a license or some type

(03:38):
of identification as being registered, andthe ones that don't are clearly not anyone
we'd want to do business with,and probably someone one of my deputies would
love to meet. So we're goingto work proactively to try to get that
done. In the meantime, peopleneed to be very very careful. You
can put up no trespassing signs,you can put up no pedaling signs.
The Sheriff's office might actually help peoplecome up with ones that are legally designed,

(04:00):
but they have to be readily observable, so they have to be at
the curtilage. If you don't wantpeople on your property, that state statute
says it has to be marked withsignage that's easily to see. Easy to
see. Can you put up assign and says I shoot every third solicitor,
the second one just left, canput that I'm gonna I'm gonna not

(04:21):
I'm gonna not touch that one.My personal favorite was Ed Zarinski in the
wake of the seventy five tornado,the late mayor of Omaha. He said,
the curfew is ten o'clock. Ifyou violate it, our police officers
have instructions to shoot to kill.Okay. That kind of ends the conversation
right there, as they were Wow, sheriff, thanks always, Yeah,

(04:44):
I appreciate it. Go ahead,yeah, go ahead. What do you
got Well, I was going tosay the other thing. Just one last
reminder, folks, I was drivingthrough some of these damage juries yesterday,
this line of cars and people withtheir phones up. Stop making this damage
tourism. Yeah, you're not onlymaking it harder for first or sponders to
get in the area. These victimsare not your entertainment, and it's harder
for us to separate the criminal elementfrom you. So please, please please

(05:09):
stay out of the area. There'sa lot of footage publicly accessible if you're
curious. Don't drive through the area. Not to mention you're probably gonna pop
a tire. There's so many nailsin these roads. Do not come into
the area, please, no doubt. That's great toes. You're right.
The video is insane by the localTV coup in the TV state. They
all have drones and I just wasmesmerized doing stuff for the Rosa di Ginozi

(05:30):
yesterday. I'm looking at some ofthe video and it's just so graphic.
And these bar to Texas well classicand then the huge one that devastated Elcorn.
That thing was about a quarter milewide.