Rapid City has experienced a significant rise in reckless discharge of firearms within city limits.
On Friday, shots were fired indiscriminately from Skyline Drive down in the direction of Bakken Park—a popular local shopping center. Tape of these gunshots, including one ricocheting, was quickly posted to social media.
Since November, reckless discharges have resulted in at least one death of a 16-year-old.
“Many times, these are guns being fired from inside a moving vehicle," said Don Hedrick, Rapid City Police Chief. "This is concerning and extremely reckless behavior. It has affected all parts of our city. Every area of our city has seen an impact on these calls for service.”
In turn Rapid City mayor Jason Salamun said these cases will be taken seriously by local authorities.
“My commitment to Rapid City is that we will enforce the law – that’s what we’ll do," Salamun said. "We can’t prevent every crime, and we don’t control the court system, but what we can do is when something happens, we can try to do our best to do something about it. We will not normalize the sound of gunshots in Rapid City.”
Questions were raised regarding the slow response of local authorities to address the matter. Police officials cite a communication breakdown and say information will be faster to reach the public. One person of interest is named, and one arrest in the most recent incident has been made.
Authorities say they don’t believe there is a threat to the public currently.