At the City Pages, staff writer Andy Mannix excavates the ongoing investigation of underage drinking at the graduation bonfire on the property of Mille Lacs County Attorney Jan Jude and tribal police investigator Russ Jude.
After being brought home from the party by concerned friends, an unconscious Bailey Hamilton was taken to a local hospital in an unresponsive state.
In Big drama in small-town Minnesota after a party gone wrong, Mannix writes:
Teenagers binge drinking at graduation parties isn't exactly shocking. But the unusual circumstances of this particular evening have made for big drama in the community surrounding Milaca.
The day after her son was rushed to the hospital, Kim Hamilton learned the occupations of Megan Kolb's parents. Her stepfather, Russ Jude, is a tribal investigator for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Her mother, Jan Jude, is the Mille Lacs County attorney, with jurisdiction over more than 25,000 people, including a large portion of the Ojibwe reservation. Both parents were home that night, but say they had no idea that kids were drinking on their property.
This isn't Jan's first brush with controversy. Most recently, Jude has been at odds with the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe tribe over its request for more federal law enforcement. Jude has argued on behalf of the county that it's not necessary, but also that the 61,000-acre reservation was disestablished in the 1800s, and the tribal land is now only 4,000 acres.
The story doesn't include earlier conflict that Jude (the former Jan Kolb) had with the band over a memo about the status of tribal land or the arrest, jailing and shackling of an eleven-year-old Ojibwe boy who missed a court appearance to testify as the victim of an assault.
Jude does seem to be a singularly unreflective individual who holds others--including another mother whose child held a party where alcohol was consumed--to a higher standard than she holds herself, her husband or her daughter. They don't seem to be accountable for anything in their near vicinity.
Not so Mille Lacs Messenger editor Brett Larson, whose paper broke the story--and whose own daughter was at the party.
Read the Mannix article to learn the full contrast. Mannix will be leaving the City Pages and heading west for grad school in California after a superlative career at the alt weekly that included copy turned in while he was still an undergraduate covering protests at the 2008 National Republican Convention (he was maced by police) to more recent work on GOP operative Jeff Larson's post-convention financial shenanigans (with Mike Mullen) and the native mob. He will be missed.
Photo: Mille Lacs County Attorney Jan Jude.
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