Sterling officer visits Hagen Elementary to build student trust
Rain sent Hagen Elementary’s police outreach indoors and up close, where students examined a Sterling patrol car, officer tools and asked Officer Fleharty questions.
Rain did not stop Officer Fleharty from bringing the Sterling Police Department’s school outreach to Hagen Elementary, where students got a close look at a patrol vehicle, officer tools and the day-to-day work behind the badge. The visit gave children a chance to ask questions directly and see police equipment up close, turning a public-safety role that can feel distant into something more familiar.
The hands-on stop at Hagen Elementary fit the department’s effort to build trust early, long before a child ever needs help in a serious moment. Sterling police have said their School Resource Officer program works with staff at Sterling’s five schools, and the city added a full-time SRO position in 2023 for the start of the 2023-24 school year. A second SRO position was authorized and hired in 2024, extending a model that relies on regular contact rather than one-time appearances.
That approach also shows up in Kops ’N Kids, the department’s youth outreach program, which is designed to build relationships with students from preschool through high school. Officers have been invited to visit Campbell, Hagen and Ayres elementary schools, and the department says elementary visits happen monthly with lessons on bicycle safety, traffic safety, Halloween safety and personal safety. Hagen Elementary has been one of the schools included in those visits, putting younger students in direct contact with officers in a setting built around conversation, not enforcement.
Sterling’s broader community policing message matches that strategy. The department says trust and respect are earned little by little, and the Colorado Department of Education’s model SRO policy says a successful school resource officer program is meant to build positive and trusting relationships between law enforcement and students. At Hagen Elementary, that goal was put into practice through a simple, concrete exchange: students looked, listened and learned from an officer who came to school with the time to answer their questions.
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