“We’re here to learn how to deal with nice people.”

That’s what one of the 29 police officers the city of Philadelphia sent to St. Paul for the RNC told me Wednesday evening. He and a partner were spending the week with a squad car parked on the grass at the south end of the John Ireland Blvd. bridge over I-94. So far that location had for the most part been quiet and far from the action.

We chatted after I saw the Philadelphia patch on his shoulder. He said they’d flown in on Saturday, taking up their posts after a day of orientation on local ordinances and constitutional protections. (He could carry his gun, he said, but rather than arrest people, he had authority only to detain them in a “citizen arrest” until local cops arrived.)

For the Philadelphia Police Department the trip is valuable as training in dealing with congenial folks, he said, in contrast with the types they face on the mean streets back home. Minnesota Nice factored into the desire of some among Philly’s contingent of cops — which outnumbered the city’s Republican delegation to the convention by 2-to-1 — to return to the Twin Cities on their own time, he said.

The John Ireland-I-94 post was where protesters sat for an hour Thursday night before deciding by voice vote to march on. Did RNC protesters do anything to alter a Philadelphia cops’ impression of Minnesota Nice? Did the police?