SROs are back in District 281

Police officers have returned to the schools in District 281.

Robbinsdale Cooper High School will now have two School Resource Officers from the city of New Hope. Robbinsdale Armstrong High School will have two SROs from the city of Plymouth. Plymouth’s officers will also serve Plymouth Middle School.

At this time, Robbinsdale and Golden Valley Police Departments do not have the staffing to post SROs at Robbinsdale and Sandburg Middle Schools. FAIR Crystal has not requested an SRO because of a lower enrollment.

At an April 15 meeting of the Robbinsdale Area School Board, members voted 6-1 to approve SRO contracts with the cities of New Hope and Plymouth. Director Caroline Long was the sole vote against. Long did not provide a comment.

The District will pay cities $11,868.15 per SRO for the time from April 16 to June 5, which is remainder of the school year. The contracts add that each city “will document all days the SRO is not on site and discount at a rate of $339.09 per day.”

What do the school resource officers do?

The Sun Post interviewed Josh Arthur and Justin Janson, the two SROs assigned to Cooper High School.

Arthur, who is new to the position, said the job includes a lot of mediation, de-escalation, education and building positive relationships with students.

Janson, who has spent a couple of years as an SRO at Cooper, said also that he also fields a lot of questions. Students want to know what is legal and illegal to do when driving. Students might need to be walked through the steps of filing a harassment restraining order or they might just be asking why there were police cars on their block last week.

Janson said a good SRO has a lot of patience. Arthur listed a few other qualities:

“You gotta be socially sensitive, [have a] positive attitude, you have to be outgoing, you have to be willing to go out in a crowd and high-five [students],” Arthur said. “You gotta have those communication skills and you gotta be that resourceful person.”

“I enjoy what I do here,” Janson said. “Just having that interaction and being able to help people solve problems, or give them resources to be able to solve the problem that they have — point them in the right direction.”

Officers won’t be wearing uniforms. The contract says “to the extent possible and consistent with other responsibilities, the SRO will wear appropriate civilian attire while working at the School.”

Arthur told the Sun Post that he usually wears the polo version of his New Hope Police Officer uniform. Janson is even more casual, wearing street clothes. A New Hope Police Department lanyard lets people know he is a police officer.

They still have their badges and guns. If a situation does become serious, the officers can intervene. SROs do not enforce school policies as they are agents of the city, not agents of the school. In the contract, it states “Incidents such as disorderly conduct, bullying, cyberbullying, disruption of school assembly or activities, profanity, dress code, and fighting that does not involve physical injury or a weapon, shall be considered School discipline issues to be handled by other School officials, unless the presence of the SRO(s) is necessary to protect the physical safety of students, school personnel, or public.”

Arthur said “we don’t even like to be present” when the student is being disciplined by the school. After that, officers might connect students to resources or chat with them.

When there is something that could be criminal, Janson said he tries to turn it into a teaching moment whenever he can.

“Most things that I can I write tickets for I don’t,” Janson said. “A lot of those are learning experience opportunities. The things that you send through the courts are kind of the more serious things that occur, you know, weapons in the school. ... If we’re able to make it a learning opportunity, we do.”

Why were the officers removed?

Last year, part of the Education Omnibus Bill changed some laws concerning schools, including adding language to the legislature which stated “an employee or agent of a district, including a school resource officer, security personnel, or police officer contracted with a district, shall not use prone restraint.”

Prone restraint means “placing a child in a face-down​ position.​”

It also said those employees or agents “shall not inflict any form of physical holding that restricts or impairs a pupil’s ability to breathe; restricts or impairs a pupil’s ability to communicate distress; places pressure or weight on a pupil’s head, throat, neck, chest, lungs, sternum, diaphragm, back, or abdomen; or results in straddling a pupil’s torso.”

Many police departments found this language confusing because it labels officers as agents of the district instead of their respective police departments and because it conflicts with another statute. Minnesota Statute 609.06 allows for reasonable use of force and “deadly force,” including chokeholds, “to protect the peace officer or another from death or great bodily harm.”

The Plymouth Police Department, and later the New Hope Police Department, pulled their officers from schools last year.

“It was weird,” Janson recalled. “We kind of knew it was coming. We were waiting for our chief to make the call, and we got a phone call one day, ‘It’s time to kind of pack your things and come back to the PD for your new assignments.’ Okay, so there’s no real warning. It was pretty abrupt. We left that day, wrote a quick sign and put it on our door and we left.”

Janson then patrolled the area around Cooper and visited daily, but it things were different. He wore his full uniform and was a little disconnected from students. According to Janson, he was asked every day when he would be back.

This year, Rep. Cedrick Frazier (DFL-New Hope) authored a bill that clarified the role of an SRO, created a model policy for SROs and established training requirements. Officers are explicitly not agents of the schools and they should follow 609.06.

Janson said he’d been watching all of the Senate, House and school board meetings, even on vacation. Eventually, the bill was signed into law and the police departments drew up new contracts with the district.

“[It] felt good to finally come home,” Janson said.