‘Rope in a tug of war’: St. Paul police chief talks about department’s role in recent ICE action

St Paul s police chief revealed Monday that states of police officers starting at an instantly escalated response to protesters at a federal immigration operation last month are not true Officers who wore gas masks and were armed with batons weren t our second third or fourth step of being there Axel Henry mentioned The St Paul City Council last week unanimously approved a resolution in which they disclosed they ll work with the Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training to conduct a thorough analysis into SPPD s use of force during the Nov circumstance which Henry explained he welcomes Henry disclosed he s already initiated internal affairs investigations The department s review of body camera footage is ongoing They ve gone through to percent of what Henry estimates to be a couple hundred hours of videos Criticism of police comes from all sides There are people who say St Paul police shouldn t have been present in Payne-Phalen at all and particular people who ask why aren t you being more aggressive in immigrant enforcement Henry mentioned St Paul adopted an ordinance in that establishes a clear line of separation between the actions of local law enforcement and those of federal immigration officials The council plans to review the ordinance and act to strengthen it if and where necessary Council Member Molly Coleman revealed at last week s meeting After an ICE raid at Bro-Tex Inc in St Paul on Nov and the federal operation in Payne-Phalen one week later Henry met with federal law enforcement leaders other local law enforcement and society groups who ve been organizing protests We need to be method driven Henry noted Part of my strategy has been to try to talk to all of the groups to figure out how we can round off specific of these sharp edges so federal officers are less likely to need to be bailed out of anything and people who want to protest and monitor it can do so in a way that won t create a situation that s unsafe for themselves or anybody else What happened in the block of Rose Avenue on Nov was extraordinary Henry disclosed Last year St Paul police responded to or handled marches protests or big demonstrations and there have been this year We re all talking about the one of Rose because that one didn t go the way we desired it to Henry noted Other cities and suburbs are feeling the same pinch and pressure he added We re kind of like the rope in the tug of war between the folks that don t like this approach and the federal agents that are doing it At a boiling point On the morning of Nov federal deportation officers were conducting an operation in the block of East Rose Avenue to arrest an undocumented person who d previously been removed from the U S and who had re-entered unlawfully according to a probable cause message signed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer and filed with a criminal complaint in federal court It started about a m ICE arrested that man but the affair continued until around p m when they arrested another man The second man is charged in federal court with assaulting and impeding a federal officer by allegedly striking the officer s car with his own and improper entry to the U S He has entered a plea of not guilty Related Articles Ringleader of vast real estate fraud scheme sentenced to prison St Paul man fatally shot his kids mother took them to Michigan before fleeing to Canada charges say Shooter ID d by executives in Stewartville High School shooting Search for the Brown University shooter continues as questions swirl about campus safeguard Rob Reiner s son Nick arrested after the director and his wife were discovered dead at their home St Paul police were called to the scene to take an accident account regarding the man who allegedly struck the federal officer s car While the officer was writing the record a crowd of people observing and protesting was growing Henry announced The officer called a supervisor reporting essentially that people were coming here already at a boiling point Henry stated The supervisor arrived and saw people were in the street Henry went there and made a decision to bring in two officers each in squad cars at opposite ends of the block on Rose Avenue to keep vehicles off the street because he disclosed he yearned to be sure no one was struck Federal administrators were holding the address for a warrant and had surrounded it because the suspect had run back into the home They weren t asking us for help with that Henry announced But they informed us We re going to be here for a bit because we re drafting a warrant Call for help Henry has heard estimates that the crowd grew to to people It completely got to the point where people tried to push in on the federal agents and their crime scene and they were calling for help saying that people were arming themselves with sticks and rocks Henry stated The group was comprised of people who were hostile and people who were not Henry reported I think that mixture was more heavily weighted toward not hostile but it only takes a small percentage to cause problems he added Police leadership on the scene were directing officers and making decisions in conjunction with department leaders They decided to bring in Mobile Field Force officers who are trained to respond to protests and SWAT officers who had just finished an unrelated detail But St Paul City Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim who came to the neighborhood as the situation unfolded declared at last week s council meeting that there are times where their posturing is the escalation Force escalated St Paul officers uses of force happened when we were trying to leave Henry explained Federal agents departed after the man surrendered to them St Paul officers were backing away on foot and several people blocked police vehicles from leaving by standing in front of or behind them Henry noted Particular instances have drawn outrage such as video of a woman with a cane who was standing still in front of a car when a St Paul officer blasted her in the face with a chemical irritant at point-blank range Mayor Melvin Carter has announced The video revealed that another officer then shoved her Protestors run from tear gas canisters fired by St Paul Police officers after a demonstration against a federal law enforcement action on the block of Rose Avenue in St Paul turned violent on Tuesday Nov John Autey Pioneer Press In another situation a St Paul police car was driving away on Payne Avenue and people walked after it An officer or officers exited and began spraying a chemical irritant Someone threw an object at the bicycle s back window emerging it Police launched -mm projectiles and chemical munitions spent canisters marked Triple-Chaser OC were visible on Payne Avenue afterward Henry mentioned those cases and everything that happened is being reviewed by the department through body camera footage The department is also scrutinizing who thew objects at the police motorcycle Badge numbers Certain people in the crowd urged officers for their badge numbers Mobile Field Force personnel are supposed to have their badge numbers on their helmets While St Paul police officers are required to hand out their business card which has their name and badge number when they respond to a call or are required officers acting as a Mobile Field Force are exempted under department framework which says they are trained not to individually interact with the constituents during such a detail Another issue that arose The department called officers in to work and chosen grabbed a jacket that didn t have their name on it We should be looking people up and down and making sure they re in configuration Henry reported Not because anybody was trying to conceal their identity but because we don t want to give any air to the argument that that s what we would do Population hearing Wednesday Related Articles A Brown University novice survived being shot in high school Then came the progressing shooter alerts Wisconsin man detained in connection with deadly shooting at Brown University Mahtomedi woman dies after being struck by bus on I- Jett once served St Paul as a police horse now he s in need of help St Paul City Council to ask POST Board for thorough study of officers use of force What The St Paul City Council is hosting a constituents hearing on federal immigration operations and St Paul Police Department conduct People can speak for up to minutes Council Member Nelsie Yang reported she s sponsoring the hearing because of the overwhelming number of people who have been asking us to share with us their grievances especially which will help them shape initiative and make budget decisions When City Council meeting starts at p m Wednesday There are several matters on the agenda before this population hearing and it s not known what time it will be up Where St Paul City Hall W Kellogg Blvd council chambers on third floor