St. Paul Public Schools looks to bring back police for big games

Sep. 24—The St. Paul school board's decision to remove police officers from its high schools last year has left a gap in security coverage for big football and basketball games.

In past years, school athletics directors would pay overtime for their school resource officers to attend games where big crowds were expected. But without that pipeline, and with the police department short on officers, police have been absent from district athletic fields this fall.

The school district and police department now are working on an overtime contract that would bring officers back for select games.

"While we remain hopeful we will eventually be able to have SPPD at our games, we continue staffing events with school personnel, contract security, and Security and Emergency Management staff," said Laura Olson, the district's security director.

THREE HURT AT CENTRAL

On Sept. 3, after Central High's first home football game of the season, police were called about a fight involving two teenage boys, according to police spokesman Steve Linders. Responding officers had a hard time locating the teens with some 200 people heading to their cars until a security staffer directed them to a spot behind the school, where they found one of the boys.

An assistant principal told police one boy punched the other from behind several times and kicked him in the head while he was on the ground. Medics transported him to Children's Hospital.

Meanwhile, another district staffer told police about video that showed a fight in the parking lot. While gathering information, the officers were told a second boy had arrived at Regions Hospital, saying he had been injured at Central.

Officers went to Children's to talk to the first boy but he refused to give a statement. While they were leaving, they learned a third teen had just arrived at Children's; he reportedly had been stabbed during a fight at Central.

All three victims were 15-year-old males. No arrests have been made.

OFFICER SHORTAGE

Olson said they've been working for "some time" toward a contract with police and it's not a response to the fights at Central or elsewhere.

Linders said that although they've been unavailable to work the games, officers have tried to be visible around the schools when possible, before, during and after the school day.

"Unfortunately, our department is finding it more difficult than ever to fill overtime shifts due to officer shortages in all three of our districts. This issue is compounded by the need for officers at the Xcel Energy Center, Saints games, Allianz Field and other venues throughout the city. But we're doing our best," he said by email.

SCHOOL BOARD CONCERNS

After years of debate, the school board voted 5-1 in June 2020 to stop negotiations with the police department on a school resource officer contract, removing officers from seven of its high schools.

The move was made against the advice of school principals but amid concerns — inflamed by the police killing of George Floyd — that the presence of armed officers in schools leads to unnecessarily harmful consequences for teens who commit crimes or break school rules.

In their place, the district installed a new cohort of support staffers trained in deescalation.

Superintendent Joe Gothard told the school board this week that he never intended for the end of the school resource officer program to also stop the practice of hiring off-duty cops for football and basketball games.

Gothard said officers help direct traffic and are useful in determining what kind of police response is needed when something bad happens. Without an officer on-site, he said, "we may get a (police) response that isn't warranted."

Chauntyll Allen, a school board member and Black Lives Matter activist, balked at the notion that police are needed at school events.

Officers earning overtime are "overpaid in that situation" and "not as effective" as school security staff who know many of the students who attend games, she said.

"We keep going back into the box ... and the box doesn't work. The box creates mass incarceration," she said.