You could almost call the gathering a “state of the public safety address” from the information that was shared at a meeting at the Hero Center in Cottage Grove, but the gathering was much less formal than that. The directors of public safety, Jason Posel of Woodbury and Pete Koerner of Cottage Grove each presented information about their current police forces and what they are doing in the community to build the best possible relationships. They went on to share some of their policing updates, especially new technology, and spoke on the steps they are taking for both promoting officers as well as hiring new officers.

Koerner kicked things off with his introduction and most notably how proud he is that Cottage Grove and Woodbury public safety work very well together.

“I want to stress some of the partnerships because whether your business is in Cottage Grove or Woodbury you guys live in a community that you should be really proud of. Most public safety departments don't play well together. Most cities don't play well together. I can say Jason and I have been friends for a long time, and our departments work well together. It's not just the public safety departments, it's our planning departments. We have a good relationship with the county as well, with the Sheriff's Department. And it's really good to have those relationships where I don't have to figure out who I'm calling, I can just pick up my phone,” explained Koerner.

With the meeting being held at the Washington County HERO center, Koerner took a moment to talk about the state-of-the-art training that happens at the HERO center. HERO stands for Health Emergency Response Occupations and the building was built by both Cottage Grove and Woodbury. It is an immersive training center adjacent to the Cottage Grove City Hall at 10125 85th Street South. It is over 48,000 square feet indoors and over 150,000 square feet outdoors. Inside, the site features large classrooms, two shooting ranges with up to 50-yard targets, immersive video scenario training and a situational training room that can be customized as needed for various scenarios. Outdoors, there are two buildings that can be set up for breeching practice as well as situational scenarios.

The facility is used by numerous agencies for training from around the metro area and Rasmussen University rents the facility for training new officers.

Koerner spoke on the extensive training the 12-member Cottage Grove SWAT team receives at the facility, which includes drone and robot usage. He also talked about the mutual aid that Cottage Grove and Woodbury have agreed to on the Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) side of things. If one department receives more EMS calls than they have ambulances for, the other city covers the call. It is the same with the K-9 units, if one is needed in the other city, they go help if they are available. The mutual aid agreement even extends to Hastings and Dakota County.

Posel spoke on the importance of having the right people.

“It really starts with our people, those who are going to serve by our values of integrity, trust, respect and excellence. And those are going to contribute not only to our department but to the entire community. It is our goal to have our staff reflect our community. Some of the things that we've done from a hiring/recruitment standpoint is put together a recruitment team. We have a specific team for fire and then EMS and then also for police as well. I put together recruitment videos for specific positions, police officers, our EMS and fire folks all have the kind of specific videos laying out what it is that position entails and why someone should consider our organization,” he explained.

They also work with the human resources department to keep a hiring pathway open for new officers. This is a thought process that is a little on the newer side for public safety and it allows those that graduate from the training in the field they are wanting to work in to get their applications in right away rather than having to wait for a specific hiring window.

Woodbury now has a full time Community Service Officer (CSO) that goes out and handles the calls like lock outs and the outreach type of events. The full-time CSO also helps with onboarding new, part-time CSOs. A key side note is that all of the police command staff are former Woodbury CSOs, so it is an important part of the organization.

Recruitment has been a challenge for both agencies. 10-20 years ago, there were 250 applicants for one position, now there might be 30 for two positions. Cottage Grove has restarted their Police Explorer program again; they go out to schools to talk about being a police officer. They are looking for ways to increase and enhance the diversity of their forces. Many ethnic groups have their own police officers’ associations, one example given was the Latino Police Officers Association.

“They came to our meeting,” said Koerner. “They were like, ‘hey, we need more members.’ I joined and it has been incredible. Now we are starting to draw on candidates from just different diverse backgrounds. Joining these associations has been pretty cool. Just recently we hosted a Latino Police Officers Association meeting here.”

During the onboarding process, the groups work hard to involve the new-hires significant others because they need to make the connections not only to the departments that their significant other will work as part of, but they need to make the connections to the other significant others on the force. This helps everyone in the department and forms a great web of support.

There is a pilot program that is coming to Woodbury called Star Chase. High speed pursuits are very dangerous for everyone; officers, suspects and most importantly, the general public. Star Chase is technology that has a James Bond or Batman type feel to it. Squads will be outfitted with seven of the devices on the front of the squad. If there is a vehicle in front of the squad that is attempting to start a high-speed chase, the officer can hit a button and one of the projectiles will fire at the vehicle and adhere to it. The adhesion process is difficult to break or remove so it won’t be something that a suspect could easily pull off if they stopped quick.

The device that attaches automatically activates and syncs with the department’s accounts giving a GPS location and other detailed data to anyone with access to the system, including the Minnesota State Patrol and their helicopters. This means that officers can safely track the car from a distance, hopefully reducing the speeds all together and increasing safety while leading them directly to the last location of the vehicle.

Woodbury is also working with new technology at specific high traffic areas around town. These areas have high retail traffic and now also have a new camera system that is set up to scan the license plates of all vehicles that enter the area. The system will trigger an alert to a nearby officer if a license plate comes back as a stolen plate or a stolen car. It will also search for felony warrants and for Keeping Our Police Safe (KOPS) alerts. A KOPS alert is a warning to officers based on previous interactions with suspects or criminals and their likeliness to resort to violent actions. This allows officers to coordinate a response and oftentimes make an arrest at a parked vehicle. This program has been very successful so far resulting in dozens of recovered stolen vehicles and arrests.

They are also working on a community program where, when a crime takes place, the residents and businesses are contacted about sharing any potential camera footage from their security systems or Ring cameras. The program is voluntary, and the submissions are protected to prevent any retaliations.

The presentation also talked about the addition of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in Cottage Grove. The goal was to have 40 businesses around Cottage Grove to have AEDs available and they have nearly doubled that with 75 businesses obtaining them. The program has trained over 1,000 people in a variety of life saving practices such as CPR, AED usage, stop the bleeding and more.

The Public Safety Departments in both Cottage Grove and Woodbury continue to work hard to keep their communities safe and the presentation made to the local business community was one of the many steps they are taking to do so. The near hour long presentation contained a lot of great information. If you would like to be included in next years event, contact the Cottage Grove Chamber of Commerce.