"Everybody's Dad" Denny Wagner Tasked With North Minneapolis Sex Offender Concentration Issue On Behalf Of JACC...

Photo and blog post by John Hoff

Longtime North Minneapolis resident Denny Wagner, who has been involved in NoMi politics longer than most of us and is a kind of "father at large" to the neighborhood, has been assigned by the Jordan Area Community Council (JACC) to the yucky and unenviable task of dealing with the Level Three Sex Offender concentration issue on behalf of the neighborhood organization.

While this blog has merely done all it can to keep the L3SO concentration issue on the front burner and on fire (kind of like when you make a flambe but you weren't really INTENDING to make a flambe, but you think--oh, heck, this is a pretty good flambe even though I was actually TRYING to make coq a vin, but I guess making coq a vin with corn whiskey wasn't such a good idea) Denny Wagner has been quietly working behind the scenes to lobby bureaucrats and public officials to get progress. In fact Denny has been...

...working on the issue for more than a year. It was, however, only recently JACC decided to formally name Denny as their representative on the issue instead of letting him act in a private, ad hoc role.

The issue grows more maddening the deeper we dig into it. Last night at a "Dessert With Don" event, answering a question from this blogger, Fifth Ward City Councilman Don Samuels said he recently learned Hennepin County is taking sex offenders on behalf of other Minnesota counties in some kind of behind-the-scenes arrangement. The statistics show Hennepin County (despite the relatively large size of its population) has far more than its fair share of Level Three sex offenders.

But, of course, no neighborhood in Hennepin County is more afflicted with L3SO concentration than the 55411 zip code, which is North Minneapolis.

Recently, of course, L3SO Peter "Spanky Pete" Rickmyer was returned to prison but this is a case of "one down, nineteen left to go" and Rickmyer's removal doesn't appear permanent.