Ramsey County sheriff wants resource officers brought back to St. Paul Public Schools
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Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that 15-year-old Devin Scott would not have died if there had been trained school resource officers at Harding High School last Friday.
Tuesday, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged 16-year-old, Nosakhere Holmes, with second-degree unintentional murder for the stabbing death of Scott.
Fletcher said school staff tried valiantly to break up a fight between Scott and Holmes, but added SROs would have been better equipped to defuse the situation.
“This incident, that Devin Scott was killed in, he would not have been killed if a police officer was present to intervene rather than school staff,” said Fletcher. “They, SROs, have the intelligence that we glean out there from our agencies and other law enforcement agencies. They would have known it was Devin Scott’s first day at school and that there were some people there who didn’t like him and they would have been able to intervene at the earliest moment.”
Fletcher told KSTP the fight that broke out between Scott and Holmes included a third, unidentified juvenile who has not been charged and the dispute, Fletcher added, between two separate groups of kids goes back several months and is tied to a murder case.
“There is a conflict that goes back to last October,” Fletcher said. “There was a young man named Antwan Watson that was shot and killed on the east side of St. Paul and the person that’s in juvenile detention right now waiting to be charged on that murder is a close associate of some of the other participants from the Harding incident.”
Fletcher also said the kids involved in the Harding incident could have been helped by proposed juvenile treatment homes that are now being considered by state lawmakers.
“This is a classic example of a couple groups of kids that would benefit from some type of detention when they are younger —14,15 years old — who get treatment for their chemical addiction, their mental health issues, their anxiety, their depression,” said Fletcher.