Residents raise complaints about police conduct, city attorney and court processes during public comment

Several residents used the Dickinson City Commission’s public-comment period to raise a range of complaints about local law enforcement, the city attorney’s conduct, municipal court practices, and an individual nuisance complaint about smoking at a commercial property.

Debbie Biffert addressed the commission about second-hand smoke from a nearby unit. She said the North Dakota property assessor’s website lists the address as commercial and asked whether the city could enforce a state no-smoking rule that she described as requiring people to smoke at least 20 feet from a building. City Administrator Dossinger responded that the city would forward her complaint to the Dickinson Police Department and Southwest District Health and suggested Buildings and Codes might be involved; Deputy Chief Hansen (present in the chamber) and staff asked Biffert to leave contact information so the police department could follow up.

Bobby Joe Helgason and other speakers made broader allegations of retaliation, denial of public records and what they described as systemic misconduct by city officials; Helgason said he had submitted open-records requests that were not fulfilled and described numerous grievances involving municipal court and other offices. Charles Tuttle and Ryan Masano echoed concerns about oaths of office, court processes and police conduct; Tuttle alleged some local officials lacked original oaths of office and accused the city attorney of retaliatory conduct (Tuttle referred repeatedly to the city attorney by variant spellings in the record). Tarika Holmes (who identified herself during remarks as Terrica Holmes) delivered an extended personal account alleging mistreatment by law-enforcement and child-protection processes and said she planned to pursue the matter further.

Commissioners did not take formal action on the allegations during the meeting. On the smoking complaint, staff advised the speaker to provide documented evidence to the Dickinson Police Department and said Southwest District Health could be notified; Deputy Chief Hansen was asked to obtain the speaker’s contact information to follow up. For other allegations about records and courts, no formal staff action was recorded on the meeting docket during the public-comment period. Commissioners asked few clarifying questions on the public comments and did not direct an immediate investigation on the record.

The record shows these remarks were delivered as public comment; they were not agenda items and no motions, findings or formal inquiries by the commission were recorded as a result of the comments at the June 3 meeting.