Waite Park City Council removes SRO

[admin]

The Waite Park City Council held a meeting breezing through five consent agenda items, including a request from staff and the pd to terminate the Joint Powers Agreement [JPA] held with St. Cloud Area School District 742 requiring school resource officers at buildings located within the city, such as Discovery Community School and the McKinley Alternative Learning Center.

The city says it was advised by its civil attorney and the League of Minnesota Cities to take the action due to increased liability to the department’s officers, as well as the city as a whole, from a recent change in state law.

As part of the new education bill, student discipline laws were altered, preventing a school resource officer from placing students in the prone position or using “comprehensive restraint on the head, neck and across most of the torso.”