The Forest Lake City Council in Minnesota voted to disband its police force Monday in favor of contracting law enforcement services from the local county’s Sheriff’s Office, provoking responses ranging from high school walkouts to calls for the mayor’s resignation.
In casting Monday’s 3-2 vote, the Twin Cities suburb reportedly agreed to effectively dismantle the Forest Lake Police Department and instead utilize the services of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office starting Sept. 1, soon making Forest Lake the largest city in Minnesota without its own police department.
City officials expect the maneuver will save more than $350,000 a year in addition to increasing the number of officers patrolling Forest Lake from 25 to 27, albeit at the cost of firing over two dozen police officers already sworn to protect the town’s roughly 19,000 residents.
Hundreds of residents were on hand for Monday night’s highly-anticipated decision, and video footage from inside City Hall shows attendees erupting into boos and hurling expletives at Mayor Ben Winnick after he cast the council’s tie-breaking vote.
“This was a very hostile mob,” Mr. Winnick told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We expected a large crowd, but we didn’t expect the hostile reactions like that.”
The backlash hardly waned the day after, as an online petition demanding Mr. Winnick’s removal garnered 1,500 signatures by Tuesday afternoon. Forest Lake High School students planned to walk out of class in protest of the vote, a local CBS network reported.
Pursuant to the contract approved during Monday’s vote, Forest Lake will pay Washington County $2.9 million each year for law enforcement services plus a one-time fee of about $88,000. Currently the city budgets just over $4 million for its police force, including about $3.3 million paid in taxpayer funds, the Pioneer Press reported.
“This is an opportunity for the city and the county to work together for the mutual benefit of our residents by saving them a significant amount of money and providing increased patrol and depth of services that we, as a city, could not provide for them,” Mr. Winnick said in support of the measure.
Washington County will begin serving Forest Lake in September as long as its Board of Commissioners ratifies the contract at date to be determined. In the meantime, both council members who voted against the contract Monday said they intend to appeal.
“What was a local issue is now a regional issue,” Council member Mara Bain told Pioneer Press. “We expect them to listen to our clear voices and reject this ridiculous contract. They need to look at it not just from a law enforcement perspective, but as a countywide public policy perspective. Now is the time they need to respect the wishes of Forest Lake residents and recognize that this is not a contract that the residents intend on keeping.”
“We’re gonna be fighting this to the very, very end. It’s tearing this community apart,” colleague Sam Husnik told the CBS affiliate. “We’re not getting the same dollar for dollar [value]. I don’t care what was said in there.”
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