Impact of Shutdown: Public Safety

During his petition for additional funding on Tuesday, League of Minnesota Cities attorney Tom Grundhoefer presented arguments to suggest shutdown-related limitations on Minnesota police departments are putting public safety at risk.

According to Grundhoefer, shutting down Minnesota’s Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) licensing board has made it impossible to recruit, hire or train new public safety officers. In cases where officers move on from a police department, it is impossible to replace them with a government shutdown in place.

“The hiring process (for police officers) is lengthy,” City of Hutchinson Police Chief Daniel Hatten explained. “Once we reach the point where an officer can be hired and training can begin, we still have three to four months before that officer can become a functioning member of the public safety department. Every day we kick the can down the road prolongs this scenario.”

Eagan Police Chief Jim McDonald said Tuesday that his department is not hiring, but if it were, this would be a problem.

"If you can’t get a license, it’s going to be difficult to put anybody on the street," he said.

Current police officers and county courts are also at risk.

With the government shutdown in place, vehicle license databases are not being updated, explained Minneapolis-based attorney Kurt Glaser.

Put simply, the databases that help officers determine the category and number of vehicle-related offenses since the government shutdown are erroneous at best and incomplete at worst.

“Police officers may start to err on the side of not taking offenders into custody because drivers know they’ll get a pass,” Glaser told Special Master Kathleen Blatz.

David Lillehaug, Special Counsel for Gov. Mark Dayton, echoed the sentiments of most people in the room, “This sounds like a serious problem. It needs to be dealt with immediately. We request the right to come back to this issue as early as tomorrow.”

Special Master Blatz continued hearing petitions on Tuesday from nonprofit organizations seeking funding after being deemed “non-core, non-essential” prior to the Minnesota state government shutdown.

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