Jefferson County school resource officers may soon have mandated training
By Andrew Fraieli, Colorado Community Media
It takes 600 hours of training to be licensed by the State of Colorado as a nail technician - the person who does mani-pedis and applies toenail polish. As of 2022, it takes 556 hours and a background check to become a police officer. Becoming a School Resource Officer - a sworn law enforcement officer, usually armed and with arrest powers while working in a school - takes none.
That's because under current state law, training for SROs is "encouraged" to be completed before being assigned to a school or within six months after. A bill being proposed by Senator Chris Kolker, a Democrat representing Arapahoe and Jefferson counties, would change that suggestion to a mandate, and not just once, but annual training.
In the Colorado General Assembly, Senate Bill 23-070 was introduced on Jan. 27 and has already been amended by the Senate Committee on Education.
"The initial concern with this was how to get a good officer, and how do we keep a good officer, and how do we keep them trained," Kolker said. The original bill focused on mandating the training on National Association of School Resource Officers, or NASRO, best practices before officers started their assignments which current state law only encourages.
This included the caveat of mandating beforehand, "or as soon as reasonably possible," as NASRO only has one training this year in March, according to Kolker.
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This story is from Colorado Community Media. CBS News Colorado is a newsgathering partner with CCM, a network of two dozen newspapers and online publications serving eight metro-area counties on the Front Range.
