The Pope County Sheriff's department held a joint press conference with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) this afternoon in Glenwood. You can read parts of the statements provided there by clicking over to the Bonanza Valley Voice website: https://bit.ly/414AH3b.
It is worth noting...
Small town police departments and sheriff's offices are not flush with staff to begin with, and when officers are pulled out of rotation either because they were killed, or they were involved in a shooting, it puts tremendous strain on the entire law enforcement system. Criminals don't say, "Well, gee, the police department is hurting now, they're short-handed, I suppose we can give them some slack for the time being."
Here's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension superintendent of investigations Scott Mueller speaking about increasing violence perpetrated against law enforcement:
Too many in the public take our law enforcement and even our EMT responders for granted. It's not just an automatic thing that these people magically appear when we are in distress. There's so much that goes into it that they are recruited, schooled, trained and then do the hard work of filling the shifts and providing the law enforcement response when things go badly.
At B-B-E schools and across Jaguar Country, we are fortunate to have men and women ready, able and willing to answer the call of duty whether it's part of the Belgrade-Brooten police department, area county sheriff's departments, ambulance crews and fire departments. They are all wonderful people. We cannot thank them enough.