The St. Paul Police Department will ask an outside law enforcement agency to investigate officer-involved shootings, the department said Monday.

The department said it has been discussing the change since May, when a presidential task force’s final report recommended that external, independent criminal investigations be conducted in officer-involved shootings resulting in injury or death.

“We’ve been a department since 1854 — 162 years — and we’ve done our own investigations since then,” said Assistant Chief Bill Martinez. “The integrity and character of our St. Paul homicide unit’s investigators hasn’t changed, but the flavor of policing nationwide has. I think the community was asking for a little more transparency and, if we can build trust … by having an outside agency come in, then I think that’s a good thing for us.”

Minneapolis’ police chief said Monday she will also ask the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate fatal officer-involved shootings, though the department hasn’t officially changed its policy, as St. Paul has.

In the past, the St. Paul Police Department’s homicide unit has conducted the investigation when an officer shoots someone. The case has then gone to a Ramsey County grand jury to review whether criminal charges should be filed against the officer.

Beginning this month, the St. Paul department will ask the BCA to investigate St. Paul cases “involving use of force or response to resistance or aggression that results in the death or serious injury of any person,” the police department said in a statement. If a senior investigator is not available, St. Paul police said they would ask the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office to investigate.

Minneapolis police asked the BCA in November to investigate the fatal officer-involved shooting of Jamar Clark in that city; the investigation is underway. Police Chief Janeé Harteau in a statement Monday that she began a discussion with the BCA in 2013 about the state agency investigating all fatal officer-involved shootings in Minneapolis.

“While I have full confidence in the investigative teams in our department, I also share the community’s desire for independent investigations,” Harteau said. “Consistent with the MPD’s core values of integrity and transparency, I will continue to ask the BCA to investigate these cases.”

St. Paul police fatally shot 15 people between 2004 and 2015; Minneapolis police were involved in fatally shooting 10 people during that same time, according to a Pioneer Press analysis.

Nathaniel Khaliq, former St. Paul NAACP president, reacted Monday to the announcement from St. Paul police, saying, “Some of us don’t feel it’s independent enough, especially in light of what we’re dealing with now, to turn it over to the BCA and also Hennepin County,” he said.

Most law enforcement departments in Minnesota have long had an outside agency handle investigations into such cases — they typically call in the BCA or a neighboring department to do so, said Dennis Flaherty, Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association executive director.

The St. Paul and Minneapolis police were among the agencies who handled their own cases because they have their own homicide units and, within the departments, “there’s been a long-established feeling that they have the best experience and expertise to handle these complex investigations,” Flaherty said.

But there’s been mounting pressure to take such investigations outside the departments. Last year, a bill was introduced at the Legislature that would have required it; it did not become law.

From Ramsey County Attorney John Choi’s perspective, the St. Paul Police Department’s decision to change its policy should enhance public confidence. He said it will not result in much of a difference in how his office handles such cases, which is presenting the evidence to a grand jury and asking them to decide whether to charge officers involved.

Under state law, a grand jury’s proceedings are not open to the public. But Choi said, in the interest of transparency, he’s interested in making as much information public as soon as possible after a grand jury makes a decision.

But Monique Cullars-Doty, whose nephew Marcus Golden was killed when St. Paul officers shot him last January, said she does not trust the grand jury process because only prosecutors present evidence. A grand jury decided not to charge the officers involved in Golden’s shooting.

Cullars-Doty said she believes the decision for St. Paul police to not investigate their fellow officers is “a step in the right direction.” Yet she thinks a better approach would be the one taken in British Columbia, where a civilian-led investigatory body looks into officer-involved shootings.

President Barack Obama said last spring that the deaths of unarmed black men showed law enforcement needed to change practices to build trust in minority communities. He said the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., exposed “deep-rooted frustration in many communities of color around the need for fair and just law enforcement.” Obama also said the policing task force that he appointed found it’s important for police and the communities they patrol to improve cooperation.

The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing’s report included more than 60 recommendations. After the report’s release, the focus within the St. Paul department has been on who should investigate officer-involved shootings because, Martinez said, “If you look at the other recommendations from the president’s commission, we’re already doing a lot of those things, especially around training officers and community outreach.”

In the St. Paul Police Department, senior leaders, homicide investigators and St. Paul Police Federation President Dave Titus were part of the discussion about the department’s policy.

Titus said Monday that historically, the St. Paul police union has “had reservations about an outside agency investigating because we want to be sure the quality of their investigation is as good as our St. Paul homicide investigators. We want to make sure they’re competent, qualified and experienced.”

BCA spokeswoman Jill Oliveira said their investigators have “a considerable amount of experience in this area as it conducts most of the officer-involved shooting investigations in the state.” The agency conducted 64 officer-involved shooting investigations in Minnesota between 2009 and 2014 at the request of local law enforcement, she said.

Andy Rathbun, Dan Bauman, Rachel E. Stassen-Berger contributed to this report, which includes information from the Associated Press.