Rita McNeil, Williston

Western North Dakota is a safe place to live. I am a resident of an RV park north of Williston and I am as comfortable here as I was in Minnesota.

Assertions that peril is around every corner are flat-out wrong. That editors at other newspapers specifically discredited a well-qualified professor shows a desire to promote an untrue stereotype of those of us working in the Bakken.

The professor’s lengthy research into crime showed little growth in relation to the increase in population. Clear in her research and recent headlines, incidents are mostly related to alcohol, little different than crime reports for most places and even a recent report on colleges in Fargo.

Out here, my neighbors are too busy working long hours, six or seven days a week, to cause trouble. When employers here value reliability above all else, those who cause trouble find it hard to keep a job and are forced out of the region quickly.

This is a place that has offered tremendous opportunity to me and my neighbors. Many of us come from small towns across the country and share the same unlocked door attitude held for decades by North Dakotans.