_fcksavedurl= In the St. Paul Police Department’s efforts to line up sufficient cops to provide security during the Republican National Convention, they’re relying heavily on state agencies. The SPPD’sinitial list of law-enforcement agencies that have pledged officers included commitments of 600 officers from four state departments. The breakdown: 270 from the state patrol, 150 each from the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Corrections and 30 from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

But it has since become clear that there are serious inaccuracies in the initial list of commitments. The corrections department, for instance, has just 17 licensed officers, according to the Minnesota Board of Police Officers Standards and Training (POST). The fugitive unit has seven sworn personnel, while the insurance fraud division has 10. But SPPD spokesman Tom Walsh assured MnIndy earlier this week that the ultimate number of state officers contributing to security efforts will be greater than the initially publicized figure of 600.

So how many licensed peace officers are actually employed by the State of Minnesota? According to POST there are a total of 835 cops working at state agencies. The majority, 537, work for the state patrol, while an additional 202 are employed by the Department of Natural Resources. So if the SPPD is indeed going to utilize more than 600 of these officers for RNC security efforts, it would mean that roughly three quarters of these cops will be engaged in convention duties. In other words, the four-day gathering might be a keen time to test out the state’s traffic-enforcement laws.