(Alpha News): The head of the St. Paul police union is slamming state and city officials for blocking cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents, claiming it directly contributed to the violence that left two people dead in the past month.
St. Paul Police Federation President Mark Ross told the New York Post that if local police had been allowed to assist federal agents, the deadly encounters involving Renee Good and Alex Pretti could have been avoided.
“I believe, had we been able to do that, that there would be no loss of life at this point,” Ross said.
Ross said Minnesota law enforcement has spent years preparing for large-scale crowd control situations — experience he says federal agents often lack.
“Since the Republican National Convention was held in St. Paul back in 2008, Minnesota law enforcement has undergone extensive training in mobile field force configurations and crowd management for major events,” Ross told the Post. “Because of that, I think we’re in the best position to deal with that.”
But he said state and local officials blocked that assistance.
“Unfortunately, our local politicians would not allow us to do that,” Ross said.
As a result, ICE and Border Patrol agents — who Ross said are not typically trained for crowd control or protest response — were left to handle volatile situations on their own, the Post reported.
Ross emphasized that coordination with federal agents would not have required changing Minnesota’s sanctuary policies or participating in immigration enforcement.
Instead, he said, it would have involved basic situational support.
“Had we been allowed just a little bit of coordination — not in terms of what ICE is doing, but if they say, ‘Hey, we need to go to this place to serve a warrant, we’re going to be out there a couple hours. We’re nervous that crowds are going to form and give us trouble. Can you come out and help?’ That’s something we can easily coordinate with a little bit of notice, and sometimes with hardly any notice, we can get out there quickly,” Ross said.
He said that kind of coordination could have prevented the chaos that unfolded.
Federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti during a confrontation in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. Video footage later showed agents recovering a firearm from Pretti’s waistband. Renee Good was also killed during a separate encounter earlier this month after accelerating toward an ICE agent.
