New police cam videos reveal details on Ravnsborg’s traffic stops

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - Reports and videos indicate South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s driving had caused police to hit their breaks on multiple occasions to avoid an accident with his vehicle on the road.

Dakota News Now issued a FOIA request and received video footage of the officers’ interaction with Ravnsborg as he is pulled over on multiple occasions.

Reports and video footage indicate Ravnsborg received 8 traffic stops in the first year of taking office, and in five of those stops, Ravnsborg either identified himself as the attorney general or displayed his badge, the Highway Patrol found.

According to Stephen Groves with AP, those traffic stops came on top of a long history of driving violations. Ravnsborg had been pulled over more than 25 times, crash investigators found. However, he was in no danger of having his license suspended in South Dakota, where accumulated speeding tickets do not count against a driver’s record wrote Groves.

The Highway Patrol records showed that a week before the Republican attorney general hit a man, Joseph Boever, walking on the shoulder of state Highway 14, he had been pulled over on the same highway for illegally pulling in front of a police car at an intersection in the city of Huron, roughly 70 miles from where the fatal accident happened. Ravnsborg displayed his badge identifying himself as the state’s top law enforcement officer and later told Huron police Officer Tanner Dornacher that he thought the intersection had a four-way stop sign.

Less than two months before the fatal crash, Highway Patrol Trooper Nathan Moore wrote in an account of a July traffic stop that Ravnsborg drove out of his lane on a road in Sioux Falls, nearly causing a collision. Ravnsborg was only issued a warning.

“I had to hit my brakes and swerve to avoid being struck by the SUV,” Moore stated in his account.

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