By Mary Divine
Pioneer Press
FOREST LAKE, Minn. — When Forest Lake resident Erin Turner heard about a plan to possibly shut down the city’s police department and contract with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for investigative and patrol services, she turned to social media.
Turner, a lifelong resident of the city, posted a petition to save the department on change.org on Jan. 29. Within hours, more than 1,000 people had pledged their support. More than 2,000 people had signed as of Friday. There’s a “We Love Our Cops” page on Facebook. And in a show of support before a Friday night hockey game at the Forest Lake Sports Center, the city’s police officers were introduced by name.
“People are shocked to hear that this conversation is even on the table,” said Turner, 42, a local attorney.
“What is crystal clear from the comments is how valued the Forest Lake Police Department is to our community,” she said. “People have expressed concerns about the ongoing safety and security of our community, decreased response times and about losing our community policing presence — to name just a few.”
She said a close-knit community like Forest Lake needs a police department to hold it together.
City officials last month asked Sheriff Bill Hutton to prepare a proposal for police services, saying they felt confident in his department because of its track record for serving other communities and that “the potential exists for synergy, efficiency and cost savings.”
Forest Lake police already partners with the sheriff’s office and other agencies for dispatch, radios, records management, a drug task force and a SWAT team.
Asking for a proposal does not mean there are any issues related to the department or its officers, city officials said in a written statement to the Pioneer Press. Forest Lake “has a great police department with amazing officers who are dedicated to serving our community.”
Hutton said in January that it would take several months to put together the proposal.
WHAT IT COSTS
Forest Lake, population 19,000, has 25 full-time police officers — a chief, a captain, four sergeants, four detectives, 12 patrol officers, three school resource officers — and two administrative assistants. The department patrols 36 square miles.
The police department’s annual budget is a little more than $4 million, or about 44 percent of the city’s $9.2 million general fund, said City Administrator Aaron Parrish. Most of that, $3.4 million, goes to salaries and benefits.
Parrish, who has worked for the city for six years, said he was aware of residents’ disapproval.
“How we keep people safe is an important and emotional issue that certainly brings out a lot of energy and emotion,” Parrish said. “At the end of the day, this is going to be a very important community conversation for us to have — one of the most important certainly that’s taken place in my tenure with the city of Forest Lake.
In addition to providing police services to six townships in the county, the sheriff’s office provides police coverage to 15 cities. One of them is nearby Hugo, population 14,000, where the sheriff’s office provides a sergeant, investigator and six deputies at the cost of about $950,000 a year. The deputies work out of an office at Hugo City Hall and at the city’s public works department.
NEW COUNCIL MEMBER OBJECTS
Forest Lake council member Mara Bain, who was elected in November, has been a vocal opponent of the plan.
“There is an element that a police department provides to a community that is high-touch, high-service that I value for the community where I raise my own family,” Bain said.
Bain, who is married to a St. Paul police officer, said she likes the concept of local control.
“I think: for Forest Lake, by Forest Lake,” Bain said. “We control budget, we control staffing, we control service levels. Why would we give that up?”
In a letter to Hutton and the Washington County commissioners published in the Forest Lake Times, Bain asked that they make sure the process is “thorough, detailed and fact-based, transparent to all impacted parties and reflects the input from and desires of the residents we are under oath to serve.”
Bain wrote that the vote to request the proposal came from the city’s personnel committee, which includes two city council members, the city administrator and the assistant city administrator.
“The (request for proposal) has caught Forest Lake residents by surprise (contract law enforcement services were not a topic of our recent boisterous election), however initial reactions have been passionate and supportive of the Forest Lake Police Department,” she wrote.
CHIEF SPEAKS OUT
In Police Chief Rich Peterson’s statement on the city’s website, he said he welcomes the opportunity for his department to showcase its talents, accomplishments and initiatives that have been developed and implemented over the years.
“It will give us the chance to display our many community partnerships and our efficiencies of adapting to an ever changing law enforcement environment,” he wrote. “Not just responding as a reactive department from call to call, but being part of the community, educating and partnering with them.”
City administrator Parrish said the community needs to ask some tough questions, including if there are better ways to keep the community safe while being cost-effective.
“I can say that we definitely love our police officers and our department, but there’s that public policy and governance element to these conversations as well,” he said.
Although any plan would need to be approved by the city council, Turner said she thinks citizen approval in a referendum should be required to make the switch.
“This effort to eliminate our police is very clearly not an effort that is coming from our community,” she said. “It is coming from a few members of our city council.”
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©2017 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)