Governor Tim Walz is under pressure from state Republicans to call a special session which would deal with confusion and concerns over a new law that affects school resource officers.
With many schools already in session, and more to come the day after Labor Day, Republican leaders in both the Minnesota House and Senate say a special session is "urgently needed" to fix that law.
"Everybody has trepidation with this and there's a reason for that and their risk levels. Some people have a greater tolerance for that risk and others don't," says Blaine Police Chief Brian Podany.
Podany joined lawmakers in calling for a repeal of the law passed last spring which prohibits any employee or resource officer from placing students into certain holds. It also limits the use of reasonable force unless students are posing a risk of bodily harm to themselves or someone else.
Podany says officers he's talked to say they are afraid of being sued for either doing too much, or not enough, to stop violence in schools.
And he isn't the only one asking for these changes. Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said something similar to WCCO Radio last week.
"So that's why SROs are so concerned," says Bruley. "And I have school resource officers that are refusing to go back and I completely understand them. They have dedicated their lives to protecting children in these schools. And now they know that a child, you know, a student will show up, he's not supposed to belong there. He'll be there to go get involved in a fight or go find a rival student that he wants to get involved in a fight with. And instead of getting arrested or stopped at the door, we have to let him in and follow him around asking him to leave. And cannot take, you know, preventive action. It's just reckless to be honest with you. This law makes our students more at risk than before. And we're trying to go to school to make them as safe as possible so our children can learn."
Hennepin County just recently took officers out of Rockford High School.
"I am a big supporter of school resource officers," Hennepin County Sheriff Dewanna Witt told WCCO Radio's Adam and Jordana at the Minnesota State Fair on Tuesday. "Me being a school resource office for six years, I know the importance of building those relationships, being proactive, that is something that we do need and it something that works well in our schools."
For his part, Governor Walz has said the law deserves another look, but it is not worth a special session.
“The attorney general, we’re trying to get some folks to get clarification,” Walz told WCCO Radio. “If we need to, we just come back and change it and make sure because those officers, we need to make sure that they and the students are safe. But we also need to make sure that we’re not using excessive force to break up a fight, and I think that was the intent of the law.”