That's because St. Paul police are changing their policies when it comes to how they patrol such big festivals in the city.

For the first time, festivals like Cinco de Mayo, Rondo Days and the St. Paul Winter Carnival will have on-duty police officers, not officers off-duty. The idea is to adjust to more demanding security issues and allow police to be more mobile and agile in how they respond to emergency situations.

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"Now when we have thousands of people in the streets, we want to make sure those events are safe, secure, and that everyone can come in and enjoy themselves," department spokesperson Steve Linders said.

"What the new model might allow us to do is take some of those officers that were working on the front end outside, and once the event starts to bring them inside and kind of backfill. So now they're working inside where the people are - where the masses are - as police officers."

The department says no one knows what the future holds - and what the cost might be to event organizers - until the new policy kicks in and the numbers come into sharper focus.

"We are kind of getting ahead of ourselves," Linder said. "This is kind of a transition year. So the costs to events this year are not changing from previous years. Will they change next year? Possibly."

