EVERGREEN, Colo. — One day after a student opened fire at Evergreen High School, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office shared that the school had a full-time school resource officer (SRO), but they were on medical leave at the time of the shooting.
To fill in the gap, Evergreen High has been utilizing part-time SROs.
“We have a couple of part-time SROs that share this school right now. There was no one from the SRO unit at the school when the shooting started,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said Thursday. “He was there until about 10:30, 10:45, and then he was dispatched out here for an accident.”
In the wake of the shooting, Denver7 has heard from several parents who were concerned about the lack of a full-time SRO.
“We had our EHS PTA meeting just [Tuesday] evening, and then our Evergreen Middle School PTA meeting [Wednesday] morning, and it came up in both meetings, because we knew we didn't have a full-time SRO this year,” Evergreen High School parent Victoria Hutchen told Denver7 hours after the incident. “I think this is just a horrific way, unfortunately, that attention is going to be brought to all of this."
Evergreen High School PTA president Cindy Mazeika said they learned about the SRO change during Tuesday's meeting.
“[Jeffco Public Schools] decided that the mountain community is a low chance incident in place, and that we were being deprioritized with funding, and that we will have a shared resource officer through all of the schools in the mountain community,” Mazeika said.
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We wanted to know about the standard SRO practice in Colorado, so we talked with Stacey Collis, a former Colorado SRO of 20 years who now helps train new school resource officers all over the country. Collis said using part-time SROs in place of a full-time SRO is not an uncommon practice in Colorado.
“It's tough to get people on board right now, and agencies are finding themselves short of staff, so you're seeing some that are pulling back a little bit, maybe having an SRO that covers several schools, until they can get SROs within those schools,” he said.
Collis suggested that schools look at recruiting retired law enforcement officers in order to fill the SRO shortage.
“I know agencies are doing that and saying, ‘Hey, do we have people that could come back and do this job and are willing to do it?’” she said.
Evergreen High School parents said they’re committed to getting those answers.
“Our needs are having these dedicated SROs who are not having to be stretched crazy thin and going between schools,” Hutchen said.
“PTA parents need to go to the next Jeffco board meeting and voice our concerns,” Mazeika added.
