At the end of this year’s legislative session, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, amended a law concerning School Resource Officers (SROs). The change prompted police unions to pull their officers from schools around the state, including RAHS.
According to the governor, this change was intended to clarify the policy, not to change its application. The statute, which used to say that any district agent “may use reasonable force when it is necessary under the circumstances to restrain a student or prevent bodily harm or death to another,” now reads “an agent of the district may use reasonable force when it is necessary under the circumstances to restrain a student to prevent bodily harm or death to another.”
Essentially, this means that officers employed by the district, as all SROs are, can only put students in a hold if they are directly endangering another student. If an officer were to put a student in a hold without it being strictly necessary, they could be sued.
Although the wording was intended to be an insignificant change, it upset sheriffs across the state. They worried that this wording opened SROs up to new liabilities because it limited the situations under which they could put students in a hold.
This worry led many police departments, including Roseville, to pull their SROs, leaving schools without any police presence.
Roseville Police Department worked around this issue by assigning an officer to patrol the school. His name is Officer Warsame, and the time he will be on campus “varies based on the needs of RAHS and the needs of the Roseville community,” according to Mike Schroeder.
The work he does is similar to that of an SRO. Schroeder said, “There is an office at RAHS that is dedicated to the Roseville Police Department,” meaning that Officer Warsame is stationed here part of the time and has a place to work from on campus.
Although not all students relied directly on the school resource officer, many felt the impact of having an SRO at RAHS. Senior Hazel Hanson commented that “the SRO made a lot of people feel safe, but others felt threatened by the constant presence of a police officer.”
Junior Ginger Anderson feels that in light of the incidents last week involving guns (check out this article for more information), an increased police presence would be beneficial. She worries that having Officer Warsame on campus only part of the time creates an environment where similar situations will be more likely to happen in the future.
