Star Tribune
Senate passes public safety bill with judicial pay raises, funding for new gun measures
The Senate passed an $880 million public safety funding bill late Friday that raises pay for judges, directs more money to the public defender system and includes an array of spending on crime investigation and prevention.
Senate Judiciary Chair Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, described the 200-page bill as spending heavily on the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, law enforcement partnerships and support for victims and first responders. Before the 34-33 party-line vote, Latz thanked his senators for six hours of discussion on the bill.
“Today we’re righting the ship. The ship for too long has been lurching in one direction,” Latz said, adding that the “tough-on-crime approach” of the GOP was unbalanced.
Republicans who united in opposition countered that the bill is a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for criminals. Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, told reporters, “Quite honestly, I’ve never seen a more dangerous bill presented from the work of the Senate Judiciary.”
All of the proposals in the bill have a long way to go. The House will eventually pass a public safety bill that differs from the Senate version. Leaders from both parties will work out their differences in a conference committee and return the adjusted bills to the two chambers for another round of votes.
One big difference involves new gun provisions. The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed changes, including expanded criminal background checks for pistols and semiautomatic assault-style rifles sold at gun shows and online. Another provision would include a red flag law, creating pathways to get a gun away from a dangerous person — through filing a petition with law enforcement or requesting an emergency hearing with a judge.
The Senate bill included funding for the changes, but left a vote on the underlying policies for another day.
Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, framed a vote for the public safety bill as a vote for new gun restrictions. Johnson said he expects the DFL to “load up” the House bill with gun measures that would be included in a conference committee report and returned to the Senate for an up-or-down vote on the full package, meaning they couldn’t be removed.
To that prospect, Latz said, “We still need 34 votes.” The DFL controls the Senate by a one-vote margin. Republicans haven’t indicated a willingness to adopt new gun safety provisions and it’s unclear whether all Senate Democrats would support them.
Also in the bill, Latz described spending on civil legal services and funding for the courts to clear the backlog remaining from COVID-19 delays. Latz noted the bill creates a new Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls and offers a reward fund for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office.
The bill would have the state take over funding sexual assault exams from counties, speeding the process of evaluating rape kits.
During the floor debate, Limmer asked Latz to explain changes proposed in the bill for the Board of Pardons. Latz said it would create a broader Clemency Review Board to review requests for pardons and submit them to the board, which consists of the governor, attorney general and chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
The bill would remove the requirement that the board vote be unanimous; only two of the three members would be needed to approve a pardon.
Limmer also asked Latz about a provision that would help inmates reduce their sentences by half, rather than a third under current law, if they participate in job training or addiction or mental health treatment. Latz said the change has been in the pipeline since 2019 and would bring Minnesota in line with three dozen other states.
“Incentive is a very powerful motivator,” Latz said, likening it to capitalism. He noted that 95% of people incarcerated will eventually be released. “We have a choice: We can do little or nothing and release them back into the community perhaps as dangerous or more dangerous” or the state can support them so they’re capable of holding a job and are less likely to commit new offenses, he said.
Limmer said 7,400 of the state’s 8,000 inmates would be eligible for early release under the program. “I’m a little concerned about that in light of the rising crime rate that we’ve experienced in recent years,” he said. It was this program he likened to the “Get Out Of Jail Free” card in the board game Monopoly.
Latz countered that under current law, the 7,400 inmates will automatically be released whether or not they participated in training or treatment programs. “I would suggest it’s the most incorrigible offenders who need this the most,” he said.
As for rising crime, Latz said that’s a national trend related to COVID-19, not unique to Minnesota. He also asserted that the past six years of Senate GOP leadership failed to decrease crime. “We need something new and better in Minnesota,” Latz said.
Latz also disputed the Monopoly reference with a string of rhetorical questions, including, “How is it free if you have to go to treatment to qualify for it? If you have to get your GED to qualify for it?”
He responded by saying, “That’s not free. It’s earned by their sweat and their energy and their time.”
Limmer offered an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but it failed on a party-line vote.
Star Tribune
Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland gets two years of probation for threatening girlfriend
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were twice called on June 28 to an apartment in the 800 block of Front Avenue. During the first call, a woman told officers that everything was fine despite previously reporting that Sutherland had choked her and tried kicking her out of the apartment.
During the second call about 90 minutes later, the woman told police that Sutherland had briefly squeezed her neck with both hands, said “I want you dead,” pointed a gun at her and hit her in the chest with it, and at one point said he would shoot her if she came back after running off. Officers then arrested Sutherland.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Alex Chhith contributed to this story.
Operators of the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) have agreed to consolidate housing units, create a new programming schedule and retrain correctional officers in an effort to satisfy state regulators, who rebuked the downtown facility last month for violating resident rights.
Changes come in the wake of a scathing inspection report that accused the center of placing minors in seclusion without good reason to compensate for ongoing staff shortages. An annual audit by the Department of Corrections found that teens were frequently locked in their rooms for long stretches, due to a lack of personnel rather than bad behavior.
In response, county officials vowed to bolster staffing and retrain all officers tasked with performing wellness checks. Last week, the facility closed its “orientation mod,” typically reserved for new admissions, and combined male age groups to reduce the number of living units and provide heightened supervision.
The moves, including a new schedule, are expected to help prevent the undue cancellation of recreation, parent visits and other privileges to children in their custody.
“[Previous] staffing levels did not allow for all units to run programming simultaneously while having sufficient staff available to respond to incidents and emergencies in the building,” JDC Superintendent Dana Swayze wrote in a seven-page letter to state inspectors. “Programming is only cancelled on an as-needed basis based on the JDC’s ability to safely accommodate [it].”
In a Dec. 4 email to the County Board, Mary Ellen Heng, acting director of Hennepin’s Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, assured elected officials that they had begun taking corrective actions but asserted that some of the report’s findings lacked context.
Heng pointed to a violation where teens were allegedly confined without cause, even when multiple correctional officers were sitting in a nearby office. She explained that, during the dates of the inspection earlier this fall, several officers observed in the office were still in training — and therefore not permitted to interact with the youths alone.
She also contended that while programming has been modified by staffing limitations, “this additional room time is not reflective of punishment, disciplinary techniques, or restrictive procedures.”
Tired of surging gun violence across St. Paul, community leaders and police are asking residents to help create a safer city.
The call for community support came Thursday night when officials from the St. Paul NAACP, St. Paul Police Department, Black Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the African American Leadership Council gathered at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to talk about ways to decrease gun violence in the city.
St. Paul has recorded 30 homicides so far this year according to a Star Tribune database, two fewer than last year. But four of this year’s homicides happened in the same week, frustrating law enforcement and alarming residents.
St. Paul NAACP President Richard Pittman Sr. said that solutions to gun violence are “right here, in the room.” But without the community’s help, Pittman said their efforts could fall short.
“Over the last several weeks and months, we have experienced an uptick in violent crimes in our communities. [That’s] turned on a light bulb that it’s time [to] not have the police feeling like all the pressure is on them,” Pittman said. “Nobody wants to the responsibility of having to shoot someone down in the street. Nobody wants the responsibility of hurting somebody’s family. We all want the best outcome.”
Attendee Carrie Johnson worried generational trauma is derailing youth’s behavior, adding that she’s seen boys in middle school punch girls in the face. Migdalia Baez said mothers living along Rice Street feel they have nowhere to turn for help in redirecting their children. Some worry that their child would be incarcerated if they ask for help.
Larry McPherson, a violence interrupter for 21 Days of Peace St. Paul, said some issues stem from youth with no guidance. McPherson and others patrol hot spots for crime across the city, including near the Midway neighborhood’s Kimball Court apartments where fentanyl drove a spike in robberies and drug violations.
“We’ve got a lot of mental health [struggles]. We’ve got a lot of doggone drug addiction that’s going on in our neighborhoods. We all got the best interests at hand for all people in our community, but we’re just not working fast enough,” McPherson said. “Until we get feet on the ground, people coming out of their own community and standing up for this real cause to take back the community, we’re going to have the same outcome.”
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