The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office is taking necessary steps to reduce and mitigate potential risk of exposure to and the spread of COVID-19. These steps take the form of change in operational procedures and affect several divisions of the Sheriff’s Office. The public should know and expect the level of service in respect to public safety and enforcing the law are unchanged.
Changes to jail operations consist of the following:
Cancellation of all outside programming for jail inmates
Cancellation of all jail visiting hours for inmates
Initial health screening of all incoming arrests in jail garage prior to introducing anyone into the jail facility
The possibility of initial court hearings being heard via closed circuit television instead of appearing physically in court
These changes are done to reduce the introduction of outside parties to the Law Enforcement Center (LEC) and to reduce the likelihood of someone with possible COVID-19 introducing it into the jail population or to staff.
Jail programming staff will be working on enhanced programming for inmates considering no visits and each inmate will be provided with 20 free minutes per week of phone usage regardless of whether they were already involved in the jail telephone program.
While these changes may not be popular with some, they are a proactive response to protecting our inmates, the citizens, and our staff as best we can.
Changes the public may see in regard to Communications and Patrol operations include:
Conducting health screenings over the phone on all medical type calls to provide first responders with vital information for treating patients
Offering the public the choice of meeting with an officer or talking to an officer over the phone on all non-criminal, non-investigative complaints
Officers talking to the public outside or in open spaces to provide the recommended social distancing during calls
While deputies and other first responders are not always able to conduct the social distancing due to the nature of calls for service, every effort will be made to try and do so. All criminal and in progress type calls will still get the same level of response as we were doing.
As the COVID-19 pandemic changes every day, the Sheriff’s Office intends to keep these protocols in place for up to 30 days with weekly reviews and analysis of each step.
These are unprecedented times in Minnesota in dealing with the COVID-19 situation and the implications can be far-reaching. The Sheriff’s Office is committed to maintaining and providing a constant presence and level of service to the public during this pandemic.
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