St. Paul police and partners help struggling students overcome obstacles and thrive
Two veteran St. Paul police officers were responding to fights and drug overdose calls almost daily at Humboldt High School, so they decided to take a different approach when it came to dealing with the students involved.
Officer Jim Lee and Sgt. Toy Vixayvong started working with the school staff and families to mentor the students, instead of arresting them.
Their work started with a few students and has since grown to include dozens after seeing tremendous success.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - A partnership between the St. Paul Police Department, St. Paul Public Schools, and the nonprofit The Urban Village, have helped dozens of students at Humboldt High School overcome struggles with violence and drugs and put them on a path to success.
This all started two years ago after officers were responding daily to Humboldt for fights and drug overdoses. In one instance, a student almost died from an overdose.
The backstory
Officer Jim Lee and Sergeant Toy Vixayvong are both veterans with the St. Paul Police Department. Two years ago, Sgt. Vixayvong said they were receiving calls almost daily from the school because of fights and students overdosing on fentanyl.
He said he and Officer Lee started thinking about how they could help these students beyond the daily response to the calls through building relationships with the students and school staff.
"We found out that there were problems with kids being addicted to opiates and fentanyl and, on top of that, there were lots of fights here," said Sgt. Vixayvong. "One student overdosed, almost died and had to be administered Narcan."
"There's been so many challenges post-covid just with mental health, addiction, and just violence and lots of anger," said Stacie Jones, Humboldt High School Assistant Principal.
The action plan
Sgt. Vixayvong and Officer Lee began coming to the school to work closely with the students through mentorship, homework help, and even taking some to doctors at the University of Minnesota to seek help for addiction.
Over time, these students started to thrive and the number of students they worked closely with started to grow. That's when they started to seek another community partner to help with the work, adding the nonprofit The Urban Village to the mix. The Urban Village in east St. Paul works with Karen and Karenni youths in the area.
"We believe in raising a child with a village mentality and so what that means is that we're open to partners, whether that's with the schools, police, or other organizations. We can't do it alone so we were really down for it when they came to us and wanting to work with us," said Kaziah Josiah, a co-director of The Urban Village.
Today, Officer Lee still picks up students once a week after school and personally drives them to The Urban Village to get resources they need.
"You go into policing, you want to help people. Well what does that mean? It means different things for different officers. To us, this is what it means, being connected to the community," said Sgt. Vixayvong.
TJ's story
Sophomore TJ vividly remembers the day he went to school and everything changed for him.
"I was just really scared when my mom found out that overdosed in the hospital. I was terrified. Just knowing that I could've died that day changed my mindset," he said.
TJ said he woke up in the hospital and one of the people in the room was Officer Lee. In that moment, TJ said, he was moved. It was a moment that showed him and his friends they could trust the officers and other adults trying to help them.
As he continued working with Officer Lee and Sgt. Vixayvong, TJ saw how they were more similar than different.
"He went through the same life we went through and that's what touched us, him experiencing what we experienced," said TJ.
Many of the students working with these SPPD officers, school staff, and The Urban Village are Asian students.
"They were Karen and Karenni students that were struggling through coming from a war-torn countries like back in the 80s and 90s when the first wave of immigrants from southeast Asia came," said Sgt. Vixayvong who recalls his childhood.
Officer Lee said looking like the students and understanding their stories helped break down barriers.
"I grew up in Frogtown, the St. Paul Frogtown area," said Officer Lee. "Growing up, my parents didn't speak English very well. My dad worked all the time and my mom stayed home and took care of us. She didn't speak English. She didn't know how to reach out to these resources and didn't know they were out there. I didn't know that they were out there and I know how tough that was for me growing up. These students that we work with… I want to let them know that these resources exist."
Today, TJ is passing his classes and no longer struggling with addiction. He said he's setting his sights on trade school and he wants to one day donate to The Urban Village as a way to repay his mentors for how they've helped him.
"At a point where I was at my lowest, they brought the spark back. I was happy," he said.
Looking to the future
Sgt. Vixayvong said in about the last year, they've received zero calls for overdoses at Humboldt High School.
"Just some of the issues we were dealing with two years ago, we're not dealing with anymore and I really believe it's because of the partnership that we formed," said Kehinde Olafeso, Assistant Principal at Humboldt High School.
Sgt. Vixayvong said that idea is crucial to the work he and his St. Paul police colleagues do.
"Like the chief said, we can't arrest our way out of a problem that's why we focus a lot on prevention and intervention and that's what we're doing," he said.
"I think Officer Toy says you can't arrest our way out of a problem. Just like we can't suspend or dismiss our way out of a problem either. We have an obligation to help these children," Assistant Principal Jones reiterated.
With the success Humboldt High School has seen, Jones said she hopes to see this work expand to other schools in the St. Paul School Districts that need it.
"We don't feel the need to do it but we want to do it because at the time we were growing up, we didn't have anybody so we want to be that person for them. We want to be a resource for them," said Sgt. Vixayvong.
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