Police responded to a shooting at the Grand Gateway Hotel on LaCrosse Street in Rapid City early Saturday morning and arrested 19-year-old Quincy Bear Robe for aggravated assault and commission of a felony with a firearm.
Apparently the Uhre family that owns the hotel and the attached Cheers Sports Bars think the proper response is to ban Native Americans from their property. Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender retweets this apparent Facebook post from Connie Uhre who invites immediate prosecution for racial discrimination in public accommodations and lodges wild accusations that Rapid City is being ruined by money from the MacArthur Foundation:
The ban on Native Americans at the Grand Gateway Hotel and associated venues is, of course, illegal and immoral.
The nutbar business about “dark money” from the MacArthur Foundation is bunk—everybody knows about the money and where it came from, so it can’t be “dark”, and as Mayor Allender explained last summer, it’s Pennington County, not Rapid City, that has received the MacArthur Foundation funding, and the money is part of long-term criminal justice reform:
Locally, there has been growing frustration with the homeless population. A few people have wrongly concluded this is because law enforcement has taken a different approach due to the MacArthur grant they have received. This is not the case.
Rapid City is not a recipient of MacArthur funding. Pennington County receives these funds which are used to fund the County’s own crime reduction initiatives. These initiatives are an effort to engage the community, decrease incarceration for low-level crimes, pre-trial monitoring, operation of the Care Campus and a variety of other cost-saving programs. The MacArthur grant is not awarded contingent on reduced level of law enforcement response or prosecutions. Pennington County and their stakeholders develop their own initiatives and are under no mandates from the Foundation.
The cornerstone of South Dakota’s criminal justice reform came in 2013 with the passing of then Senate Bill 70. This bill was passed, in part, to avoid building new prison space which is terribly inefficient and expensive to taxpayers.
As a result of, or in conjunction with the 2013 reform bill, the judicial system in South Dakota has adopted new practices relating to incarceration for minor offenses, extended use of probation, pre-trial monitoring and a variety of other creative approaches in hopes of unburdening the criminal justice system. This has been an eight-year process and did not happen in just the five or so years Pennington County has been receiving MacArthur funding [Steve Allender, “It’s Not About Grants, Criminal Justice Is Never Easy,” Rapid City Journal, 2021.07.17].
But the Uhre family has continued to spread this bunk. In his response to Mayor Allender last July, Grand Gateway owner Nick Uhre suggested the MacArthur money is somehow a leftist plot to kill us all with “critical race theory”:
Is Critical Race Theory now in use in our local Criminal Justice System? Is it because of the policies dictated by grants received by the County from the private non-profit MacArthur Foundation?
…MacArthur is clearly a leftist agenda-driven organization. Is their vision of “Justice Reform” what the citizens of Rapid City want? Is it beneficial to the well-being of our community? MacArthur is not accountable to the voters, yet they are driving policy decisions in our county criminal justice system. How will MacArthur leverage their Safety and Justice Challenge Network in the future? Since the advent of MacArthur’s influence on local law enforcement, we’ve seen a huge rise in vagrancy, property crime rates have skyrocketed, violent crime and murders like the brutal killing of Reta McGovern in her own home are far more common.
Criminals are emboldened to offend because they are more aware of the arrest restrictions and racial quotas imposed on law enforcement than the average citizens who become their victims [Nick Uhre, “Racial Quotas in Law Enforcement Are Emboldening Offenders,” Rapid City Journal, 2021.07.28].
Uhre is also chairman of Concerned Businesses of Rapid City, Inc., a non-profit he organized on February 1, 2021, with Outback Steakhouse proprietor Jasmine Stangle and hail repairman Duane Langenfeld. Perhaps the other concerned businesses that are part of this non-profit should express concern to their chairman and his family that openly declaring a ban on Indians isn’t good for anyone’s business in Rapid City… except the civil rights lawyers who may rain fire on the Grand Gateway and Cheers shortly.
I know after nearly every spirit-boosting, brain-arousing, compassion-propagating original program aired on PBS, the major contributor making it possible is the MacArthur Foundation. If those enriching gifts are part of pushing some leftist agenda to corrupt America, then banning Natives and locking them up and airing only tv for tools like The Bachelorette Millionaire (or whatever) must be keeping America bloody/ugly/dead. America needs corrupted by MacArthur’s Foundation.
I think I’ll stay there this summer. Start an interesting conversation in their bar.
When D10s are outlawed only criminals will have D10s.
Those with even the fewest dots available never fail to connect them, coming up with some cockamamie pattern taken as a given.
Incredible!!! “Entering Rapid City. Turn your clocks back to 1954.”
Little wonder Rapid City is a Russian nuclear target.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aANGAiRkZQ4
No, Larry, Russians are far less sensitive to racism than Rapid City. Putin has been exploiting white supremacist movements to undermine Western stability. Let’s watch for the Uhres to add Russians to the folks getting special room rates.
Connie’s son Nick is gaslighting back, telling SDPB Arielle Zionts that his hotel will not be banning Indians and that his own posts spotlighting homeless people in Rapid aren’t anti-Native. Even Zionts feels obliged to point out that an establishment may have de facto discriminatory policies without have any official written policy.
Just one more reason to not spend my money in the Black Hills.
What Arlo said!
Mark, don’t forget to open carry in that bar as you engage in any interesting conversations.
Even without the racism, the Grand Gateway is one of the last places I want to stay in Rapid. I’d rather be downtown, or at the Days Inn near Baken Park.
Whats a native rancher to do???
I’m with Corey the place is a dump anyway. I think they hosted the a sheriffs group last year that claims they are the supreme law of the land.
Native Americans have any representation in the City council?
How about setting up a Non profit group that will build and set up 6 hotels in Rapid City, own all 6 of them, and be a center of Native Culture and diversity hiring , to show how harmony between the different ethnic groups can be studied, planned and created?
I think a Native Hotel brand centered in Rapid would be great, either creating good paying jobs and/or returning 80% of nonprofit profits to different nonprofits helping Natives for education, job training and medical help.
For every problem that a racist creates, have 6 positive solutions.
Richard, I always leave well before closing time, open carry is everywhere these days. My pockets are so full of stuff people believe I carry.
Mr. Spike is righter than right about that hotel hosting some nutjob convention just a while back. I recall something about free food and considering providing free gravy taters for the Conservatives with Common Sense at the nearby Perkins, but many people were loathe to visit that part of the town.
Grudz, “…many people were loathe to visit that part of the town….” We call them elitists who think their poop doesn’t stink. There is nothing wrong with “that part of town.”