Minnesota’s attorney general said Wednesday that there have been “significant misunderstandings about the impact” of changes to state law for school resource officers, including an interpretation by some that SROs couldn’t use any physical contact to address non-violent behavior.
Keith Ellison said that is not the case, as he issued a supplemented legal opinion.
About 40 law enforcement agencies have paused their school resource officer programs. On Wednesday, after Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools announced they’d learned Eagan police would no longer provide school resource officers, the Eagan Police Department said it was evaluating the attorney general’s opinion and expected to make a decision Thursday.
A change in state law this year says school resource officers can’t restrain students face-down or put a student in a hold that restricts their ability to breathe or communicate distress, except when necessary “to restrain a student to prevent bodily harm or death to the student or to another.”
Ellison issued a legal opinion on Aug. 22, at the request of the Minnesota Department of Education commissioner, that the change to the law didn’t limit the types of force that could be used by school employees and agents to prevent bodily harm or death, but said the force must be “reasonable” in those situations. He issued a supplemented opinion Wednesday.
“My top concern continues to be that students and school staff be safe in schools and that law-enforcement officers can effectively play their part in keeping them safe,” Ellison said in a Wednesday statement. “My original legal opinion last month addressed only the question of whether the recent amendments to school-discipline laws allow the use of prone restraints and other techniques in cases of imminent physical harm to self or others. Since then, I have been in conversation with a variety of stakeholders, including law enforcement, who have raised more questions in good faith. I have also seen misunderstandings of the original opinion and the law.”
Law enforcement leaders have said they regard the change as imposing two standards on officers: School resource officers working under a contract with a school district are subject to the law, while a patrol officer responding to a school is not. They also interpret it to mean a school resource officer couldn’t hold a student by the arm, because that’s a form of restraint, unless the student posed a risk of bodily harm or death, the head of the state police chiefs’ association said last week.
But Ellison said school resource officers “simply must avoid the restraints identified” in the statute, “namely that unless a student poses an imminent threat of bodily harm to self or others, professionals ‘shall not use prone restraint’ and ‘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.’
“If a student is misbehaving in a way that does not and will not harm that student or anyone else, professionals in schools still have many tools at their disposal, including other kinds of physical contact,” a summary from the attorney general’s office continued.
Ellison also said it’s not the case that school professionals would have to wait until someone is injured before intervening with reasonable force.
“The law says school employees and agents ‘may use reasonable force when it is necessary under the circumstances to restrain a student to prevent bodily harm or death to the student or to another …’,” Ellison’s office said. “The Legislature’s use of the word ‘prevent’ means that when a professional determines a student is about to harm themselves or another, the professional may intervene.”
Ellison said the amended law does not limit the types of reasonable force that can be used by officers.
“‘Reasonable force’ is a legal standard that demands that a response be proportional to the threat, based on the totality of the circumstances,” said the AG’s office’s summary. “… As the original and supplemented opinion both say, ‘The standard for reasonable force has not changed, and is highly fact-specific.’ As the original and supplemented opinions also say, ‘… the level of threat posed by a particular student or situation can change rapidly, and any assessment of what use of force was reasonable must take that into account.'”
Gov. Tim Walz was scheduled to meet Wednesday with the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association, League of Minnesota Cities, legislative leaders and the Attorney General’s Office.
State law says an attorney general’s opinion on school matters “shall be decisive until the question involved shall be decided otherwise by a court of competent jurisdiction.”
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said Wednesday that he expects the matter will go before a judge and he’ll wait on such a decision. He previously moved his office’s six school resource officers into a new juvenile unit in the department and said they’re still spending about 80 percent of their time in schools, but not as SROs.
Minnesota House of Representatives Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, renewed her request Wednesday for a special legislative session. Police departments that started the school year with SROs, including Apple Valley, White Bear Lake, Maple Grove, Brooklyn Park and Woodbury, recently made announcements they were pausing their programs.
“For weeks schools, law enforcement, and legislators have been asking Gov. Walz to call a special session to fix this problem and get school resource officers back to their posts,” Demuth said in a statement. “Despite encouraging comments earlier this month about working together, we’ve had just one meeting with the governor who has continued to hold closed door meetings only including Democrat legislators. Otherwise there’s been zero meaningful progress even as the list of schools who have suspended SRO coverage continues to grow.”