On Wednesday February 10, St. Paul Youth Services (SPYS) hosted an event at the Sun Ray library for finding the next St. Paul Police chief. Mayor Chris Coleman and City Council member Russ Stark attended. SPYS wanted to hear youth voices on how the police affect our community.

We talked about how police officers influence our everyday lives. You can find a police officer in most SPPS high schools. At Highland Park Senior High School we have Officer Hull. In a country that has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, does our discipline on teens have to be linked to police officers?

The school to prison pipeline has been a growing topic in the media. The school to prison pipeline is a term that refers to pushing at risk schoolchildren, who are predominantly people of color, into the criminal justice system. There have been studies that have shown the link between students that are suspended to their committing future law violations.

What is most disappointing is how small the ethnic population is in Minnesota schools, compared to their suspension and high school drop out rates. For example, nearly 60% of suspensions in Minnesota were from black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic students, but they only make up a quarter of the population of the schools. 

SPYS is trying to help us learn that the school to prison pipeline is a real and urgent issue. We should be using our law enforcement to help and protect youth instead of making it difficult to get an education.

St Paul Youth Services was founded in 1973, and provides many services, including the Pre-Court Diversion Program, which helps young adults that committed petty theft offenses like shoplifting and curfew violation have other alternatives to help them stay out of the criminal justice system. Another service they provide to young adults is the Ambassadors for Youth program, which provides counseling and tutoring in community centers.

Over the past week, you may have noticed some spontaneous road closures and a large motorcade and helicopters whizzing through the air constantly. This is because Vice-President Joe Biden made a stop in St. Paul, the final of 3 city visits throughout the country.

The Vice-President’s main stop, while visiting St. Paul, was at the Union Depot, which received over $35 million in economic stimulus money for its renovation in 2009. That money came from the Economic Recovery Act, a federal program that invested in infrastructure and renewable energy sources, and its primary objective was to save and create jobs immediately. Other financial areas of concern that were addressed in this plan were health care, education, and expansion of unemployment benefits.

Biden’s goal during this brief tour was to remind people what the economic climate was like back in 2009, and why he says the economic stimulus package was a great benefit for the country and its people. He stated how projects like the Union Depot renovation helped spark many other jobs of the same sort, which in turn helped in pulling our country out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Mayor Chris Coleman also chimed in about the benefits of the stimulus:  “When you look at the success of downtown St. Paul, and you look at that partnership that we’ve had both on the state level and the national level, that much of the growth that we’re seeing in downtown is directly attributable to that support.”