North/East metro news briefs: St. Anthony digs into traffic stop trends

Nearly two years after a St. Anthony police officer shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop, a report published by the police department is digging into traffic stop trends in the area.

The report, released this month, examines the race and gender of stopped drivers, the reason for each traffic stop and whether officers searched the drivers or vehicle.

St. Anthony police, who patrol St. Anthony and Lauderdale, made 2,104 traffic stops last year. Of those, about 29 percent of the stopped drivers were black and 64 percent were white, according to the report. Black drivers were more likely to be issued a citation rather than a warning, with 51 percent of black motorists cited compared with 44 percent of white drivers. The combined demographics of surrounding communities are about 17 percent black and 64 percent white.

Ninety percent of motorists stopped by St. Anthony police in 2017 were from out of town.

The report states that while the data patterns for race are similar to neighboring police agencies, the St. Anthony Police Department is "committed to better understanding the data, along with the factors leading to demographic disparities." St. Anthony police officials say the data collection represents part of a commitment to transparency.

Hannah Covington

Booming Blaine continued its growth spurt in 2017, adding more people since 2010 than any other suburb in the seven-county metro area, according to new Metropolitan Council estimates.

The Met Council's preliminary estimates, published this month, show that about 65,300 people now live in Blaine, up from 57,186 in 2010. Blaine is the only Anoka County city to crack the metro area's top 10 list in growth.

Other cities to post big numbers in the latest estimates include Woodbury, which has grown by 12 percent since 2010, and Plymouth, which has grown by about 9 percent.

The metro area as a whole expanded by about 8 percent, or 225,000 residents, in that time period.

Hannah Covington

Four graduates of Stillwater Area High School will be honored next weekend as the school's Distinguished Alumni of 2018, a program sponsored by the high school and the Partnership Plan, the school district's funding partner. They are:

• Tracey Galowitz, class of 1979, of Baytown Township, an estate planning attorney and principal at the Lake Elmo-based law firm of Galowitz Olson. She has served on several local nonprofit boards and has been a leading businesswoman in the St. Croix Valley.

• Pamela (Ogren) Johnson, class of 1976, of Rochester, Chief Nursing Officer at the Mayo Clinic and chairwoman of the nursing department there. She has worked at the Mayo Clinic for 37 years, starting as a staff nurse at Methodist Hospital, and has served on the clinic's boards of governors and trustees.

• David Ratte, class of 1980, of Stillwater, a retired U.S. Navy captain and nuclear-trained submarine officer who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served 34 years in uniform. At one point he commanded the USS Minneapolis-St. Paul, and he conducted his final Navy tour as commanding officer of the Naval Reserve Office Training Corps at the University of Minnesota.

A dinner will be held Friday, June 1, for the honorees at the Lake Elmo Inn Event Center; it will be open to the public and begin with cocktails at 5:30 p.m. The alumni also will be recognized Saturday, June 2, at high school graduation at Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown St. Paul.