What’s going on with School Resource Officers (SROs) in Woodland Park schools? These have typically been Woodland Park police officers, providing a partial security presence at our schools. Last year, there were two SROs (I believe the school only paid for one, the cost of the other was on the city)…and by spring, both of those were no longer working as SROs in the district. With the board and superintendent eliminating the large mental health support program in our school district, parents have been justifiably concerned about the safety of our kids. David Illingworth and Ken Witt have repeatedly said that the city and sheriff are both unable to provide officers. CORA requests are casting doubt on this statement, as you’ll see below.
The question has been, what is the district’s plan for providing security to our students? Illingworth hinted at a plan in the works using private security in the April City Council meeting, and mentioned (time stamp 12:32 in this video) that the WPPD and Sheriff don’t have enough personnel to provide a full time officer in each of the six school (this is true). The board met in executive session with Sheriff Mikesell in the May 10th meeting to discuss security. The Sheriff does have his own private security company, so it’s been suspected the district would leverage that to help keep our kids safe – but no mention of this appeared in the budget in June.
What CORA requests have revealed is, reassuringly, the board DOES appear to have a plan in the works to have one security guard in each school (there is no indication that any plan has been finalized). There aren’t enough law enforcement officers in this small community to serve those roles (assuming one person per building), and it’s not clear at this point whether those roles will be entirely private security, or whether they’ll be a mix of private security and law enforcement officers. It’s also not clear what cost this will carry.
Dig deeper though and you see friction between our police department and Ken Witt. It seems to have started with the issue of plugging the ‘gap’ in SROs to close out the school year (though perhaps started earlier this year when the chief rejected the district’s request for police presence at all board meetings). On May 3rd, WP Police Chief Deisler offered officers on overtime three days a week to work as SROs, but the district didn’t take him up on that offer. Witt went on to spread incorrect information about that situation to a community member who had emailed him about their concerns (email link is below):
We were very disappointed when Chief Chris Deisler informed the school district this year that the WP PD no longer has the manpower to provide SROs given their law enforcement demands and limited personnel in Woodland Park.
Ken Witt, July 11, 2023
Chief Deisler replied to Witt:
Shortly after the announcement that Ofc. DeJesus was coming back to Patrol, I announced an internal lateral transfer “intent to apply” process for the now-vacant SRO position at WPHS since the final security plan for school safety and security had not been finalized for school year 23-24. Not one eligible police officer applied for this assignment. You can also see that in order to continue to support the school, I offered a city-paid overtime detail for three officers a week to be present at the campus to help get through end of the year at no cost to the District. No one at the school ever finalized this process with me.
WPPD Police Chief Deisler, July 12, 2023
If you read the entirety of the email exchange (obtained via CORA and can be read here), it’s pretty clear that Chief Deisler tried working with the district on this matter but the district did not engage him. Worse though, Ken Witt, in my opinion at least, has portrayed our local police department as uncooperative and unable to help, which is not the impression I get when I read the email from the Police Chief – quite the opposite, Chief Deisler actually seemed eager to help. It’s unknown why the district made the decisions they did about this.
While it’s reassuring that the board is still working on a security plan (Chief Deisler and Sheriff Mikesell appear to be collaborating on it), I hope that plan includes our local law enforcement officers, not just private security.
I encourage all community members to read the entirety of the email exchange for themselves.