Rainy-day police visit at Hagen Elementary builds student trust

A rainy morning did not stop School Resource Officer Fleharty from bringing police work to Hagen Elementary, where students got a close look at a Sterling Police Department patrol vehicle and the gear officers carry as part of a visit aimed at building trust early.

Inside the small Sterling school at 301 Hagen Street, children asked questions about the job and saw how an officer works before a crisis ever reaches the front door. Hagen’s enrollment is listed at roughly 111 to 137 students depending on the school profile and year, which made the visit feel personal rather than ceremonial. In a building that serves one of RE-1 Valley School District’s two elementary schools in Sterling, the contact gave young students a direct, face-to-face introduction to a uniform they may otherwise only encounter in stressful moments.

That kind of early interaction fits the role Colorado assigns to school resource officers. The Colorado Department of Education says a successful SRO program is meant to build positive and trusting relationships between law enforcement and students. State law also directs the Colorado POST board to consult school board members, SROs, K-12 advocates and student groups when shaping policy, while federal guidance from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services says school-based policing should support students and avoid harmful effects on the learning environment.

The visit also reflects a broader shift in Sterling. The city added a full-time school resource officer in 2023, in place at the start of the 2023-24 school year, and authorized a second SRO position in 2024. That expansion suggests the district and police department are treating school contact as part of everyday public safety work, not an occasional outreach event.

For children, the lesson was concrete: police are not only the officers who respond when something goes wrong, but also the people who explain their equipment, answer questions and show up on a rainy day because the relationship itself matters. The National Association of School Resource Officers describes that role as a mix of law enforcement, mentoring and public safety education, and Hagen’s visit showed how Sterling is trying to put that model into practice.