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**The L. Anthony Sutin Civic Imagination Award:St. Cloud, Minnesota**
September 2019 | Volume 12 | Issue 8

The L. Anthony Sutin Civic  Imagination Award is named in memory of Tony Sutin, who served as a founder and  deputy director of the COPS Office from its creation in 1994 to 1996. This  annual award is bestowed upon a collaborative team of law enforcement and  community members whose innovative civic interactions have transformed public  safety in their community. The ideal nominee creates community collaborations  that are innovative, creative, and transformative; displays civic leadership  through problem solving and collaborative partnerships; and promotes public  safety through dedication to the community policing philosophy. For the 2018  Award, two winners were selected. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, the award was  presented to the St. Cloud Public Safety Foundation and the Community Outpost  Team of the St. Cloud Police Department.

 All policing is local, and that goes double for St. Cloud,  Minnesota. In 2014, the St. Cloud Police Department started designing their  Community OutPost (COP) House program and facility. The idea was adapted from a  project in Racine, Wisconsin, where the police department had renovated or  rebuilt homes in high-need, high-crime areas and repurposed the houses as  police department outposts. St. Cloud identified both a neighborhood and a  specific property as the genesis for the project. “In 2014, we were dealing  with higher crime rates and livability issues on St. Cloud's south side and it  was then when I pitched the idea of having a COP House program to Chief  Anderson,” said Officer Dan McClure. “In addition to crime rates, the area in  which we serve is very transient with approximately 95 percent of the  properties in the area are rentals. Furthermore, we knew that over 90 percent  of children, K through 12, were on free or reduced lunch.” 

The St. Cloud Police  Department convened community partners and service providers to identify all  the services that could be distributed from the COP House to ensure a  holistically “well” community. This included CentraCare Health, a local healthcare provider. Other early partners included Minnesota School  District #742, St. Cloud  State University, the Mayo Clinic  Gold Cross Ambulance, Stearns County Human Services, and the St.  Cloud Rotary Club. Once the coalition  was established, it began the process of conversion to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit,  the Greater  St. Cloud Public Safety Foundation.  The foundation spearheaded the fundraising necessary to build the launch the  COP House. The entire project was funded without tax dollars, and the end  result was a renovated facility that meets the needs of both the department and  the neighborhood.

 “I think that the neatest thing about our  Community OutPost is how we have truly incorporated the entire community in to  the plan and the service delivery,” Sergeant Lori Ellering suggests. “We all  talk a lot about wellness in our daily lives, yet there is so much more to  being ‘well’ in your neighborhood than just not getting robbed on your way  home. Crime prevention and detection is a critical component to public safety,  and that is the component that the police do very well. Our community can add  to that: a safe place to play, education planning and adult education, legal  assistance, healthcare services and so many other services and networks!” 

 The day prior to the award ceremony, the COP House hosted  their weekly East African Women’s Sewing Circle. The house is a fully  functional departmental outpost, but it also serves as an ambulance bay for  Gold Cross to reduce call times, a base for WIC clinics with Stearns County  Human Services, a meeting place for community meetings, a temporary care  facility for children while foster care is being arranged, a base for sporting  activities run by students from St. Cloud State University, a classroom for a  law enforcement class taught by the university, and a site for a monthly  community wellness day with CentraCare Health. There are even free dental  clinics on a regular basis.

It wouldn’t be a celebration in Minnesota without a choir,  and the North Star Boys Choir led the national anthem. The local Boy Scout  troop provided the trooping of the colors. Kids from the nearby Boys and Girls Club  marched over for the event (Sgt. Ellering knows them all by name), and  neighbors stopped in to have a word with Officer McClure. Chief William Blair  Anderson told the assembled crowd, “The [Sutin] award is affirmation and  recognition that our efforts are not in vain. It also reminds us and motivates  us to remember that although we have excelled and done well in this endeavor,  we must continue to work hard to make sure ours is a community that embodies the  spirit of cooperation, compassion, and consideration for one another.” 

 The COP House shows no sign of slowing down. At the time  of writing, Officer McClure had his hands full: “Just yesterday we completed  our second annual Back to School program. We were able to provide school-aged  children from across the area with 500 backpacks, 380 of which were filled with  school supplies. We had 15 volunteers to help with the event as well as five  interpreters to help with translation. In addition to the backpack giveaway, we  had members from District 742 ready to register new kids for school this fall  as well as Public Health giving immunization record information to those  families requesting it. In all, the event went extremely well, even though we  had a massive 20 minute thunderstorm that blew through the area.” (It wouldn’t  be a summer day in Minnesota without a thunderstorm, either.) “We are also in  the process of having a homework/tutor help after school program to start this  fall. We hope to have that up in running by the middle of September!”

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The Community Policing Dispatch is the e-newsletter of the COPS Office. 

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