Colorado school resource officers required to meet, train annually under new bill passed at state Capitol

For the very first time, some training requirements are on the horizon for school resource officers in Colorado, after state legislators passed a bill Friday to put those requirements into law. Before, it was only encouraged for SROs to have specialized school training.

The bill received bi-partisan support and sponsorship, something rather unusual in today's heated political climate. Read the complete bill by clicking here. 

"I don't think it's a political issue that we want to keep our kids safe," said Sen. Chris Kolker (D-Littleton), who first initiated the bill last year.

He says it was his wife -- a middle school counselor -- who first inspired him to write the bill after she had positive experiences with well-trained school resource officers in the district where she works.

The bill requires SROs across the state to meet annually with the attorney general's office to discuss best practices and receive more thorough training about the state's Safe2Tell reporting system.

"I worked with the attorney general's office on this to get SROs from around the state together after the school year, which they currently don't do, many of them work in silos so they don't work and interact with each other, (so, I wanted to) get them together to work on how to respond to Safe2Tell calls, and what Safe2Tell can do, and what's appropriate, and what's not appropriate in relation to Safe2Tell," Kolker said. "But the other underlying meaning of that is also to get them together to find out what works and what doesn't work. What are you doing in your building? What are you doing in your school district? How are you handling these situations? I think we learn a lot from each other in our experiences. So that is is something that the attorney general's office wants to focus on also is how we can get a little bit more uniform training. Use the experiences they have and role model."

Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer (R-Mead) says the bill is a common sense measure, especially given two high profile shootings at Denver's East High School this spring, and an uncoordinated response to a fake threat at Loveland High School earlier this month. 

"Let's get back to how do we really harden our schools, fortify our schools and make sure that we're providing a safe environment for kids, and we can do that by ensuring that there are school resource officers in the schools," Kirkmeyer said. "When I saw this bill... I thought, 'oh, I want to be on that bill.' So I contacted the senate Democrat sponsor and told him that I would like to be on his bill, because again, it this isn't something that's a Democrat issue or Republican issue. It should be an everybody issue."

She says she's also sponsoring an additionally school safety bill this session that will provide more grant funding to schools looking to beef up their security plans.  

"When you walk into the capitol, you have to walk through a security checkpoint, and you have to have IDs, we have armed guards at our doors. They're called the Colorado State Patrol, and those are at courthouses, public buildings everywhere, except for our schools," Kirkmeyer said. "Maybe these are things that we need to be looking at in our schools so that people understand you can't just walk into the school and start doing things that are not good and traumatizing people."

"The big work is still ahead of us"

But there have been criticisms about the role of SROs in schools. Some experts say they can contribute to the school to prison pipeline. 

Last fall, CBS News Colorado found nearly a third of all students arrested in Colorado public schools last year were students with disabilities, and since 2018, more than 130 students with disabilities have been arrested in public schools.

For example, an 11-year-old boy with autism was arrested by a school resource officer in 2019 after he poked another classmate with a pencil. See that full report by clicking here. 

Sen. Kolker says he's already working on a bill for next year that would install more uniform training requirements for SROs to better address those issues, because he says at the end of the day, being a cop on the streets is much different than in the schools.

"The frontal lobe isn't developed... we need to make sure that the officers understand that and can address those kids in an appropriate manner," Kolker said. "This bill isn't the end all be all... it's to get them together, get some organized training when it comes to Safe2Tell, and trying to do more work next year on more uniform training. I think the big work is still ahead of us."

The bill will go into effect starting next summer, but before then, it still needs the governor's signature to be finalized into law. With the bi-partisan support it's received, supporters say it's very likely that will happen.