 Keep Your Home Safe this Holiday Season
During the holiday season, many people travel to spend time with relatives. Here are some best practices to protect your home when you are gone.
- Close and lock all of your doors and windows whenever you are away from home.
- Don't announce vacation plans on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
- Don't post pictures to social media sites while you are away.
- Stop mail and newspaper deliveries or ask a neighbor to pick them up.
- Ask a neighbor to keep an eye on your home and keep up basic maintenance, like picking up packages and shoveling snow.
- Set up timers for interior and exterior lights.
- Don't leave valuable items in plain site. Store sensitive, expensive and important property in a secure place.
- Activate your alarm systems.
For more tips, review the Minneapolis Police Department's crime prevention resources Protecting Your Home While on Vacation and Home Security Habits Checklist.
10 People Charged with Intimidating, Bribing Witnesses
These people were part of a scheme to bribe and intimidate witnesses to recant their testimony in a murder trial that sent three men to prison for life.
The main defendant is Lamonte Rydell Martin, 24, who was charged with 12 counts of bribery, tampering with a witness and accomplice after the fact. Martin was the mastermind of the operation to get several witnesses to sign affidavits claiming that they lied when they testified against Martin, Cornelius Jackson and Jonard McDaniel for gunning down Christopher Lynch in North Minneapolis in 2006.
The charges culminated an intense 10-month investigation by Minneapolis police and Minnesota Department of Corrections, but the investigation totaled two years from the time Corrections officials first became suspicious that something unusual was going on.
“It’s outrageous enough that they committed the murder and other crimes in the first place,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said. “Now they are using a mother, their girlfriends and other gang members in prisons around the state to bribe and intimidate the men who testified against them. Congratulations to investigators on an excellent investigation. We are going to come down hard on these defendants for trying to corrupt the system and for threatening innocent family members.”
Find out more about this case.
Obtaining Justice - Recent Court Outcomes
Jury convicts Manney in New Hope domestic murder
Douglas Carl Manney was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder in the killing of his girlfriend, Kristeen Sandeen, in their New Hope apartment last year.
Manney will be sentenced Dec. 5 at 8:45 a.m. by Hennepin County District Court Judge Marilyn Kaman. Prosecutors will request 180 months in prison, the upper limit of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines recommendation for this offense.
Second defendant pleads guilty in 2011 Minneapolis home invasion murder
A second defendant pleaded guilty to last year’s home invasion and shooting death of Shea Stremcha in the Longfellow neighborhood.
Semaj Williams, 22, of Brooklyn Park, pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder.
Williams testified that he and two other men had planned to rob the house of a drug dealer, but they broke into the wrong home. When Stremcha came downstairs, Xavier Walker shot him.
Walker, 25, no permanent address, will go on trial for first-degree murder March 4.
Williams will be sentenced to 460 months in prison on March 26. Robert Shelby, 28, of St. Paul, pleaded guilty in May and will be sentenced to 426 months in prison. |
