Residents Look To Add Mental Health Section To St. Cloud Community Policing Agreement

(KNSI) – Thursday’s Community Policing Agreement annual review opened the door for some future additions to the document.

Roughly 15 attendees and representatives from the St. Cloud Police Department and St. Cloud Regional Human Rights Commission signed off on meeting again on how law enforcement handles mental health calls and whether the issue could lead to a new section of the agreement.

Chief Jeff Oxton tells KNSI News other topics could eventually be included, too. “I think we still need to talk about some gun violence issues that we see, you know, just like across the country and the state.”

Oxton says this isn’t the first time that the document has been altered. “It was more singularly focused at the beginning, and I think how we’ve seen it grow, like in 2018, how we saw it grow was to realize that what people really want is fair and equal public safety to everybody in our community.”

It was first agreed to in 2005, and a major revision was signed in 2018. Oxton will present during the next meeting on the steps SCPD already takes to live up to its end of the compact. His talk will be similar to the one he gave at last year’s annual review.

The group also proposed several minor fixes to the agreement, such as changing the clause that states the annual review must take place in January, which hasn’t been met in several years. Another example is removing a requirement for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, St. Cloud Regional Office to develop police training materials. The office is no longer staffed.

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