The Falcon Heights and St. Anthony city councils will decide this week whether to authorize a police services partnership eight years after a St. Anthony police officer fatally shot St. Paul resident Philando Castile during a traffic stop.

St. Anthony provided policing services to Falcon Heights for more than 20 years, but the two St. Paul suburbs cut ties after police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot 32-year-old Castile on July 6, 2016.

Falcon Heights began to contract with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office for policing services in January 2018.

However, Falcon Heights and the county agreed last March that the city needs to find an alternative when their police service partnership ends in February. The city is set to authorize a new partnership with St. Anthony at a Wednesday meeting.

What has changed

A number of things have changed since Castile’s shooting, according to Falcon Heights officials. Their city has a new council and the senior leadership team is almost entirely new, said City Administrator Jack Linehan.

Following the shooting of Castile, the St. Anthony Police Department worked with the U.S. Department of Justice Collaborative Reform for Technical Assistance team from 2016 to 2018 and completed more than 1,600 training hours in 2023.

The police force also has adopted body cameras and since 2019 provides an annual use of force report which is available to the public.

“…We’ve done a lot of work in Falcon Heights over the last seven, eight years, kind of with community conversations and a lot of dialogue. And we’ve kind of heard throughout that there was an interest in returning to a model of community policing,” Linehan said.

“We started it off on our end by making sure that we talked to key stakeholders and people who we wanted to hear from us, including (Castile’s mother) Valerie Castile and the Castile family. We sat down with Valerie before and to let her know that we were going to be having these discussions. That was important for us,” Linehan said.

Valerie Castile did not return a phone call from the Pioneer Press seeking comment.

The city also went through a public engagement process starting in February, hiring a public relations firm to plan engagement and host listening sessions with city council members from both cities, Linehan said.

Background

The fatal shooting of Castile, who was Black, touched off days of protests in the Twin Cities and around the country. Yanez was charged and eventually acquitted on manslaughter charges after a three-week trial in St. Paul.

As St. Anthony and Falcon Heights came under scrutiny in 2016, contract discussions for their partnership broke down, Linehan said. In the past, when communities contracted with another agency for policing services, liability usually rested on the agency that provided the policing, Linehan said.

“Didn’t matter if it happened in Falcon Heights, there was no shared liability. And so following the police shooting of Philando Castile, there are multiple lawsuits that stemmed from it, multiple different agencies had to pay large settlements. City of Roseville did. St. Anthony did, but Falcon Heights did not,” Linehan said.

In 2017, St. Anthony pushed for Falcon Heights to provide its own insurance, but it was something that the city council and administration would not consider at the time, Linehan said.

The city currently has insurance coverage as part of its contract with the sheriff’s office and will have coverage with a future partnership, Linehan said. Police coverage is a larger expense for cities so to have insurance as part of a contract was not a significant additional cost for the city, Linehan said.

St. Anthony’s projected cost for law enforcement services for Falcon Heights was $1.85 million in September.

Having that coverage if it means the city has police services was something Falcon Heights is willing to do, Linehan said.

Ramsey County

Falcon Heights’ contract with Ramsey County was set to expire Dec. 31 this year. Challenges with the current partnership were attributed to staffing and distances deputies needed to travel to Falcon Heights.

The sheriff’s office eventually agreed to extend its services until Feb. 28, 2025, while Falcon Heights transitions to a new agency with a start date of March 1.

St. Anthony was initially interested in providing policing services starting in January of 2026, due to staffing and overtime concerns, but have adjusted their start date to March 1 with an expected ramp-up of services over time.

Considering other cities

With the high demand for police officers, Falcon Heights having its own police department would create a challenge in an already limited pool of candidates, Linehan said.

“And so being able to kind of benefit from economies of scale and kind of having a couple cities work together to create a police agency, that does make the most sense, and that’s kind what the model that Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, St. Anthony had for a long time, and that we’re trying to kind of rebuild and consider again,” Linehan said.

Falcon Heights administrators proceeded to have conversations with other cities to replace the county’s services, including the cities of St. Paul, New Brighton and Roseville. But Falcon Heights hit various blocks that prevented those potential partnerships from going forward, including liability issues or lack of interest in expanding, such as was the case with Roseville, Linehan said.

“The city has tried for many years to find another police agency that’d be willing to cover us after we had heard that from the sheriff that they didn’t want to cover us long term,” Linehan said.

Lauderdale is also covered by St. Anthony’s police services, which would allow neighboring Falcon Heights and Lauderdale to assist each other, Linehan said.

“But obviously there’s some challenges. It’s not as easy as going with another agency that doesn’t have that history. It was easier to talk to St. Paul or Roseville. We don’t have to do as long of a public engagement process,” Linehan said.

Contract

Falcon Heights Mayor Randy Gustafson said he is confident the cities will go forward with a partnership.

“And St. Anthony has been a stellar example of how to voluntarily address what happened and how to move forward to prevent, and to provide better policing services that meet community needs,” Gustafson said.

St. Anthony is considering expanding its police facilities, whether or not the partnership goes forward. If it does move forward, the costs for the renovation would be shared by the cities.

Under the agreement, the St. Anthony Police Department would provide a 24/7 911 service starting on March 1 with an attempted average of eight hours of daily patrol coverage and an expected ramp-up of services over time.

While there are concerns about staffing levels, the partnership also allows for potential sustainability, said Jeff Spiess, St. Anthony police chief. A partnership would allow the department to increase by eight sworn police officers and add a community engagement officer, according to Spiess.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to be sustained police agencies, the smaller that you are. A partnership will allow us to grow and serving three communities will increase that sustainability for us,” Spiess said at a September workshop.

For more information go to falconheights.org/government/public-safety/law-enforcement-police-services/