St. Louis County pulls resource officers from schools
ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MN. (Northern News Now) - The St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office joined the growing list of law agencies who are pulling their School Resource Officers (SROs) from schools around the state of Minnesota.
The agency has three SROs for St. Louis County, rotating between four St. Louis County Schools, including North Woods, Northeast Range, Cherry and South Ridge.
“Our SRO program has been in existence for a number of years now, but this is the first time we’ve ever had to pull them over something like this,” St. Louis County Undersheriff Jason Akerson said.
The removal of SROs comes from a language change in the more-than-200-page education bill that passed this past legislative session addressing the use of reasonable force.
It’s language that Undersheriff Akerson said puts his SROs in civic and criminal liability.
“For example, if an SRO had to put a kid in a bearhug to control them, that could be construed as a violation of the statute, so it’s a lot of ambiguity,” Undersheriff Akerson said.
Local lawmakers are disagreeing with the decisions to pull SROs out of Minnesotan schools.
Republican Representative Spencer Igo, along with several other lawmakers, are pushing for a special session to implement a “repeal bill.”
“So we can repeal it, and we can work on it next session because that was the biggest problem with this policy, it was tucked into an education bill and this is public safety, right? This is judiciary-type stuff,” Igo said.
DFL Senator Grant Hauschild said the word change was a “nuanced policy proposal” that requires a simple fix.
“I think it’s pretty simple, but it would be nice if we could have clarification provided by the agency, and then February when we go back in session, we can clean up the language then,” Hauschild said.
Undersheriff Akerson said the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office is hoping for clarification on the education bill, and they won’t reinstate their SROs until the agency’s concerns are addressed at the capitol.
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