Town of Bagley scraps plans to disband police department
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As a slew of local governments across greater Minnesota look at cost-saving measures to balance budgets, a popular method for them has become dissolving their local police departments – followed by contracting law enforcement services out to county sheriff’s offices.
In October, the city of Bagley announced they were considering just that. But after months of debate and objections from many residents, the city council recently voted unanimously to keep its police department for the foreseeable future.
Bagley Mayor Duane Lewis said after comparing numbers the savings would have been minimal.
“I was asked to see if we could make changes and that's what I was trying to do,” he said. “We're a small town. We don't like our taxes going up, which they haven't. We've been holding steady so far. And we're taxed pretty high the way it is right now.”
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According to city leaders the police department accounts for about a third of the annual budget in the town of 1,300. With Bagley being the Clearwater County seat, city officials were considering contracting with the sheriff's office for law enforcement services instead.
Mayor Lewis said even if the city council had approved the measure there wasn’t a guarantee that the Clearwater County Board of Commissioners would have been on board for the required final step.
“We still couldn’t just make the county take over our department or contract with the city,” he said. “They still would have had to have it approved. It had to go through them and that whole process as well.”
Back in the fall when the announcement was made it was met with huge pushback from local residents. Many packed into the public library for a public forum on the issue shortly after.
One of those was Bagley Public Library librarian Heidi Moore, who at the time expressed concerns about working alone in the library. Moore said in the past she had witnessed drug deals in the library parking lot.
She said after asking police to come by more often the drug activity slowed. Moore ended what she had to say with words that would prove prophetic.
“You talk about the cost. What is the cost in our safety if we get rid of our police department?" she asked.
The following month a law enforcement officer shot and killed a man after the suspect led them on a chase through town and fired what was described as a “flare-type projectile” at them.
Ultimately Mayor Lewis said disbanding the police department at this time is not worth the risk to public safety. But he added, it's something they may have to revisit in the future. The police department has three officers including its chief.
