Redwood Fall police SRO stepped down

[admin]

August 2023

In Redwood Falls, teachers and staff are getting ready to start the school year next week.

Down the street at the police department, Monday morning started with Chief Jason Cotner trying to figure out what to do with the open school resource officer job.

“The timing on this is not great. The community wants the position, the school district certainly wants the position,” Cotner said. “It’s not like a regular patrolman job. Not everybody can do it. This is very specialized, very unique personality.”

Back on Friday, Cotner said the department’s SRO asked to step down citing concerns surrounding a new state law, asking instead to go back to being out on patrol.

Redwood Falls Police said the way they interpret the new Minnesota law is that a school resource officer can’t restrain a student unless there is imminent bodily harm and that such contact is not allowed in other situations.

“Now we’d have a police officer in this department with a different use of force rules than the other officers, so what does that look like in policy? I don’t know,” Cotner said.