House OKs $15.4 million supplemental public safety package

A public safety package would give a $12 million headstart to a new Minnesota Victims of Crime account in the Office of Justice Programs for grants to community-based crime victim services providers such as emergency shelters and legal advocacy.

The funding is by far the largest portion of the $15.44 million supplemental 2026-27 biennium budget request for the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Corrections and the Peace Officers Standards and Training Board.

Sponsored by Rep. Kelly Moller (DFL-Shoreview), HF1082 was passed 126-7, as amended, by the House late Monday; its next stop is the Senate.

“It’s a modest public safety finance bill with a big impact,” she said.

An additional $2.12 million would go to the Philando Castile Memorial Training Fund. Managed by the POST Board, the fund supports mandatory training for officers in de-escalation, implicit bias and crisis management to improve community-police relations.

The bill would create the Minnesota clearance grant program and appropriate $1 million in Fiscal Year 2027 to the Department of Public Safety for grants to law enforcement agencies to increase the solve rate of crimes that involve a nonfatal shooting.

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An amendment successfully offered by Rep. Terry Stier (R-Belle Plaine) would establish a task force to establish statewide network funding for public safety radio communication infrastructure.

Successfully offered by Rep. Bidal Duran (R-Bemidji), an amendment that was amended, would provide personal information protections for public safety officers. It’d match a 2024 law that prohibits the dissemination of certain personal information regarding judges and court staff.

Policy provisions

Creation of a criminal offense for grooming a child under the age of 16 is among policy provisions in the bill.

The bill specifies that a person found guilty of grooming would face incarceration for up to 5 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

The bill defines grooming as a pattern of conduct by an adult who knowingly “seduces, solicits, lures, or entices, or attempts to seduce, solicit, lure, or entice, a child to engage or participate in unlawful sexual conduct that is for the purpose of sexual gratification or arousal of the victim, the accused, or another individual.”

Two task forces would be created by the bill: one on improving responses to domestic violence crimes and another to develop a plan to create a standard form of identification for use by emergency responders in the state.

Other policy provisions, some of which would also appropriate funds, would:

• increase the penalty for impersonating a peace officer from a misdemeanor to a felony;
• increase penalties for assaulting security officers providing services in a hospital or clinic;
• prohibit the sale or transfer of a law enforcement vehicle that is equipped with emergency or public safety equipment and insignia that could misleadingly identify it as a law enforcement vehicle; and
• create enhanced penalties for theft when the offender knows or has reason to know that the victim is a vulnerable adult.