School and Community Outreach Unit

The School and Community Outreach Unit (SCOU) was created in July 1999 following the School incident in Columbine High School. The Unit consisted of 9 Troopers and 2 Technical Sergeants. The Trooper positions are assigned to Troop Headquarters for Troops A, B, C, D, E, F, K and 2 in G. These Troopers, also called School and Community Outreach Coordinators (SCOCs) or Coordinators do the bulk of the presentations in Troop to alleviate the need for Troopers to come off the road to perform outreach activities.

The Coordinators also attend meetings and are committee members of organizations dealing with all types of crime prevention. They have received specialized training in the area of school violence, crime prevention, conflict management, school resource officer supervision and emergency management. They are trained to assist the Troop Emergency Management NCO with the duties of their position if needed. The Technical Sergeant positions are assigned to Field Command at Division Headquarters for program oversight. Due to the amount of crime prevention activity at the Capital, an additional Coordinator position was assigned to Troop X.

The Troopers in these positions have been extremely busy since inception of the program, but all have loved the position. There has been low turnover in the position and all but one have left the position because of a promotion. Four people have left because they were promoted to Sergeant, two left because they made the BCI and one became a K-9 handler.

In 2000, the SCOU more than tripled in size with the addition of 37 School Resource Officers (SROs) funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Then, in 2002 a second COPS grant was funded allowing the program to almost tripled again with the total number of SROs currently at 92. More detail regarding the SRO program can be found in the SRO Program History article.