St. Cloud Police Chief Speaks Out Against New Use of Force Standard

(KNSI) – St. Cloud’s police chief says recent changes enacted by state lawmakers won’t help make the community safer. The new standards, passed by the Legislature in 2020, raised the bar on officers to justify in specific terms how their actions involving lethal force were necessary.

Cheif Blair Anderson says police got good news this week when a judge suspended the new stricter standards and halted a change that he says was unfair to police.

“Because the standard that was there was high enough. And the standard that was being imposed, made it almost impossible for police to defend themselves. And I told them, you guys are going to drive good people out of this profession. And I don’t blame them.”

Anderson was in St. Paul testifying several times against the proposals and said legislators are listening to activists and not police officers.

“Common Sense gets lost in politics. And why there is this charge to change an entire discipline without consulting the subject matter experts? And to me it’s very dangerous. It’s dangerous for the the men and women out there who 99.9% of them do the job the right.”

Four police groups sued the state, saying the new use of force standards make officers give up their rights to refuse to testify against themselves in deadly force cases. The 2020 law change no longer allows officers to justify deadly force by claiming that they used force to protect themselves or another person from “apparent” death or great bodily harm.

The new law stated police could only use deadly force “to protect the peace officer or another from death or great bodily harm.” The change also added new conditions that the threat of death or harm be “articulated with specificity” by the officer, is “reasonably likely to occur absent action by the law enforcement officer,” and “must be addressed through use of deadly force without unreasonable delay.”

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