ST PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota lawmakers are on the verge of a compromise that will give police officers who work in schools clearer authority to use force.
Minnesota reacted to the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer with a series of police accountability measures that included restrictions on the use of force, such as ban on chokeholds. But a section of a broad education law enacted last year led around 40 police departments across the state to voluntarily pull their officers from schools.
They said new restrictions on the use of face-down prone restraints, which can impair breathing, made it impossible to do their jobs as they had in the past.
The Minnesota House voted 124-8 Monday to pass a change backed by law enforcement that's meant to ensure that school resource officers can use prone restraints on students, although school staff would remain banned from doing so. It would also require better training and creation of a model policy on the duties of police who work in schools. It also would expressly prohibit officers from being used to impose discipline for violations of school policies.
“I’m hoping that we can get them all back into school with this stuff fixed today," said Republican Rep. Jeff Witte, of Lakeville, a retired Burnsville police officer who was a school resource officer for four of them. "And I think this will obviously keep our schools, our students and our teachers safe, but also give our parents some peace of mind.”
The bill's lead house author, Democratic Rep. Cedrick Frazier of New Hope, said the training requirements and development of the model policy are the “centerpiece" of the legislation for him, and that the process will provide opportunities for community groups as well as law enforcement to weigh in.
Rep. Frazier said he appreciated the efforts of Republicans, especially those with SRO experience, to share their perspectives and help craft a final version of the bill that could garner broad bipartisan support.
"We’ll put something in place that didn’t exist before that we need to have exist, we’re doing the definition of SROs and we’re going to codify some things in terms of basic standard training they’ll need to be in those school buildings," Frazier told reporters.
He referred to the bill as a piece of clarifying legislation, because it essentially puts into state law what Attorney General Keith Ellison had said in his legal opinion last year, when he tried to assure the law enforcement community officers could use the same level of reasonable force in all settings.
"It does create a bright line as to when SROs can engage our students, and it can’t be for discipline. In most of the discipline cases I’ve heard about, it’s been when those officers are pulled in to do something that really our staff, our administrators are trained to do. That’s classroom management."
Frazier's bill creates a model policy for SROs and sets minimum training standards. The legislation leaves it up to the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board, or POST Board, to adopt the final version of that model policy and training protocol. The POST Board is required to do that after consulting stakeholders from both the law enforcement and education communities.
The issue has been among the most contentious of the three-week-old legislative session. Some activist groups opposed changing the law at all, framing it as a student safety issue. But the compromise cleared its final House committee last week with unanimous bipartisan support after negotiations among Democrats, Republicans and law enforcement produced a consensus. Frazier said the Senate is just waiting to get the final version.
Groups representing the state's police chiefs, sheriffs and rank-and-file officers endorsed the compromise language in a letter to lawmakers last week, saying they “feel a sense of urgency to resolve this issue so the SRO's who are not currently in Schools can return as quickly as possible.”
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association listed at least 41 school districts that had lost their officers as of last fall. The group doesn't have up-to-date figures but spokeswoman Leslie Rosedahl said “only a few” departments have sent their officers back, even after Attorney General Keith Ellison issued guidance last year saying that the new education law didn't prevent police from using “reasonable” force to prevent injury or death.
Minnesota school districts aren't required to have school resource officers and most didn't, even before Floyd's murder put Minnesota in the international spotlight and forced a reckoning on racism and police brutality. The Minneapolis school district was one of many across the country that eliminated them in the wake of Floyd's death amid concerns that armed officers in schools disproportionately arrest students of color.
The eight "no" votes in the House Monday came from Democrats who aren't happy to see the power to use prone restraints restored to anyone inside a school building. Some have also expressed concern those types of face-down holds are used disproportionately against BIPOC students.
Rep. Frazier said it has been difficult to prove that in the past because the state wasn't collecting data on the use of restraints in schools. Once this bill becomes law schools will be required to report to the Dept. of Education when those restraints are used.
The Los Angeles Unified School District cut more than 100 of its officers in 2020. Denver schools decided last year, amid an upsurge in school violence, to bring them back after agreeing earlier to phase them out. But it's hard to put a number on how many school systems across the country made changes after Floyd's death, said Mac Hardy, director of operations for the National Association of School Resource Officers.
The emphasis on training in the new Minnesota legislation resonates for Hardy. Officers assigned to schools need to be well-trained, specifically on working in a school environment, he said.
Hardy, who previously worked as both a teacher and as a school resource officer, said officers need to understand the adolescent brain to understand how students react in stressful situations and how to de-escalate conflicts. He added that officer selection is also important because they need to enjoy being around kids and must want to be assigned to schools.
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