The role of police officer is one that has been a point of contention across political lines in recent years.

Regardless of one’s perception, the Durango Police Department’s School Resource Officer team for Durango School District 9-R believes it is all about serving their community and creating educational experiences for kids. It’s also about how they can help guide students on their pathway to a successful life.

School Resource Officers are selected members from the police department to patrol the schools in the district. They ensure that campus is safe while also being adult figures students can trust.

Twenty-four-year SRO veteran Leonard Martinez was the first officer in the program when it started in 1999.

“To me, it’s the best job that I could have ever had within the police department,” he said. “I just love families and the kids.”

Martinez is normally stationed at Durango High School while on-duty. Jim Martindale, the School Resource Officer for Riverview, Needham and Park elementary schools, said he became an SRO after spending years as a softball umpire and basketball referee. When his daughter entered kindergarten, it inspired him to join the force.

Miller Middle School school resource officer Nathan Scott never expected to be a police officer. He earned a degree in both history and education, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he elected to join law enforcement rather than teach online.

“I still love working with kids and just kind of wanted to find a way back into the school,” Scott said.

Sergeant Will Sweetwood is also a supervisor for the police department’s SRO program. He said the experience changed his life.

“Police officers have a tendency to be a little jaded because we see people at their worst, most the time,” he said. “With this, we get to see a lot of people at their best.”

On a deeper level, the officers understand that their role as an SRO is slightly different from doing patrol work for the city.

Martindale said every school is different and has its own culture.

“Our goal as a patrol officer is to eliminate crime. We arrest people, put them in jail and do those reports,” Martindale said. “But here, we’re trying to skirt people having to go to jail.”

The SROs emphasize education over punishment when they come across students who committed a crime or are getting in trouble.

“One of the unique things is that they get to offer diversion,” said Sweetwood about school resource officers.

Diversion is a series of programs that implement strategies to help younger people avoid the criminal justice system. There are aspects of social work and counseling youth would receive help for substance abuse and to ensure they don’t go down a path of criminal activity.

This creates scenarios where students can avoid their futures being hindered by juvenile criminal records or even an adult criminal record if they’re 18. Sweetwood said that diversion allows for SROs to be like “indirect mentors” to students and help them if they are struggling to stay out of trouble.

The school district also has a Safe2Tell system in collaboration with the police department, where students can confide in professionals about use of substances or harassment they may be receiving at school.

Sweetwood said this allows the police department to understand what kind of diversion programs a student may need.

“Sometimes, we’ve had issues with drugs or a kid using drugs. A kid got reported and the administration checked it out, and sure enough, he had the stuff and admitted to it,” Sweetwood said. “But that’s where we intervene and instead having the kid charged, we select to do diversion.”

From their perspective, the goal is not to put a child in jail. Rather, it’s to get students to think about what they’re doing and right their wrongs.

Usually, diversion is when the a school administrator brings the SRO and the child’s parent in, and they discuss the incident and its consequences, Martinez said.

“Nine times out of 10, most of the stuff that happens in the school isn’t big stuff,” he said. “It’s all pretty minor and they just need to think about what they’re doing.”

The officers will then confiscate any illegal property and then write up a diversion referral form, which will summon them to contact the police services that run the diversion program.

However, a punishment that is handed down from the school district for committing a crime on campus is different from what would be given through diversion. Police services will conduct a screening of the student and evaluate what they did.

The services team will meet with the parents, and then they will come up with the terms of the program and how long that program may last.

“What’s good about the diversion too (is that) it’s not a cookie-cutter thing where it’s one size fits all,” Martindale said. “The caseworkers there will meet with the parents and students to basically see what drives them so they can be successful.”

This will often include trying to figure out what interests the students may have so that they can try to focus on positive outcomes.

For many of the officers, they been able to watch students grow up from kindergarten through high school.

“I still have communications outside the school with some them,” Martindale said, adding that interactions with students can even inspire some to join the force.

Martinez says he’s known about six students that have decided to enter law enforcement because of the interactions they had with SROs through the district.

Martinez said it’s like having a second family, giving the students another trusted adult figure in their life.

“It’s super easy for us to build a positive rapport with students, if we are just staying involved in what they enjoy,” Scott said. “We go out to recess and play basketball with the kids and they love that.”

tbrown@durangoherald.com