They were tentative, cautious and blunt. Eight years after a St. Anthony police officer shot and killed Philando Castile in Falcon Heights during a traffic stop, the two city councils came together to discuss the possibility of St. Anthony once again providing police services to Falcon Heights.
The community leaders met in St. Anthony’s City Council chambers Thursday, Feb. 8. They took turns expressing their positions.
Falcon Heights Mayor Randy Gustafson spoke first. “Our complacency was rocked on July 16, 2016,” he said. “Philando Castile’s death had a large impact on us.” He said the community’s previous focus on public safety was on mundane issues such as crosswalks. Suddenly, the community was forced to consider what kind of police services it wanted.
A year after Castile’s death, the St. Anthony City Council voted to end its contract with Falcon Heights, citing insurance costs. (The city’s insurance paid Castile’s mother, Valerie, $2.995 million; his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was with him in the car when he was killed, received $675,000. St. Anthony’s insurance premium went up $12,000 per year for three years.) It maintained its policing contract with neighboring Lauderdale.
Falcon Heights was stung by the cancellation of the contract. They cast around for other policing services, contracting with Roseville and with the Ramsey County Sheriff. Neither could provide the City with the same level of service they’d come to expect from St. Anthony. They also considered a contract with the St. Paul Police Department.
They conducted a study in 2022 and 2023 through the Center for Values-Based Initiatives to analyze the city’s law enforcement needs. In a press release, Falcon Heights City Administrator Jack Linehan said St. Anthony was a good fit because of the level of service it could provide, its physical proximity, logistics and financial considerations. However, “It’s imperative that we recognize Philando and the impact his killing had on all of us — including his loved ones, the communities of Falcon Heights and St. Anthony Village, our leaders and our staff, along with the members of the St. Anthony Police Department and their families.”
Jan Jenson, the only St. Anthony city council member who was on the council at the time of Castile’s death, remarked, “It [the decision to terminate the contract] was extremely difficult.” He went on to say the SAPD had to do more than just create a document; it had to change its culture. He later told a Northeaster reporter, “We should never have walked away.”
Falcon Heights Council Member Melanie Leehy served as co-chair of that city’s inclusion and policing task force. She made it a personal goal to get inclusion and equity training for city council members. She noted that, working with the Ramsey County Sheriff, “we had to go with the package they offered us.” She wants to see “healthy reform” of SAPD before committing to a new relationship and would like to bring in the NAACP and the Urban League to meet with SAPD Police Chief Jeff Spiess.
St. Anthony Mayor Wendy Webster said SAPD, which underwent Department of Justice training, is now considered a model for other police departments She said the two cities are in an “exploratory phase,” and she looked forward to examining the values of the two cities.
Falcon Heights Council Member Jim Wassenberg was complimentary. “This [SAPD] is an organization that is willing to learn and get feedback. They have a spirit and culture of police improvement,” he said. “I encourage Falcon Heights residents to take a look at SAPD.”
Gustafson praised SAPD’s reporting transparency by posting weekly crime reports on its website.
Eric Meyer, a new council member for Falcon Heights, said he was living in California when Castile was killed. “When I was doorknocking this fall, I expected to get more negative responses about SAPD,” he said, “but I heard a lot of stories about [the department] being part of the community. ‘They used to give my kids baseball cards,’ things like that.”
Leehy said the two cities need to “pop the bubble of silence” that grew in the aftermath of the killing and not just talk about policing, but other issues, too.
The two councils agreed to meet again, and to invite the City of Lauderdale into the discussions. They talked about holding public forums, town halls and open houses and creating avenues for public feedback.
They have ten months to come to an agreement. Ramsey County will continue to provide police services to Falcon Heights until Dec. 31, 2024.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Gustafson said, “It’s been a hard eight years.”
Falcon Heights Mayor Randy Gustafson listened to St. Anthony Mayor Wendy Webster while she spoke at the Feb. 8 meeting of the two city councils. (Cynthia Sowden)