DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — Staff and school resource officers in Douglas County will have to go through more training on how to interact with kids with disabilities after a mom sued the district, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office and several deputies in 2021.
The lawsuit accused Douglas County school resource officers of "aggressively" handcuffing her child with autism and locking him up after he poked a classmate with a pencil at Sagewood Middle School in Parker.
In 2021, a spokesperson for the district said the original call reported something worse - that a student had been stabbed with a pair of scissors and a staff member had been assaulted.
"Their hope was to make sure this didn't happen to someone else," said Sara Neel, a senior staff attorney with ACLU of Colorado who represented the boy's family.
According to a statement from the school district and the sheriff's office, all involved have denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit was still settled.
As a part of the settlement, the sheriff's office and the district have agreed to make changes starting this school year.
Those safety changes include:
● Any SRO assigned to a DCSD school must complete training on interacting with people with disabilities, which has been specifically designed for law enforcement;
● SROs shall have access to student Behavioral Intervention Plans (BIPs) consistent with the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and SROs shall make reasonable efforts to comply with such plans when interacting with students. This includes the requirement that SROs specifically review, on an annual basis, any BIP for students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) who have previously demonstrated behavior that poses a safety risk to themselves or others;
● School administrators and licensed mental health staff shall receive annual training regarding SRO roles and responsibilities, including that: (i) SROs are not responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline matters involving students; (ii) where practical, DCSD staff should contact school building administrators to make a determination as to whether to call SROs regarding a dysregulated student who has an IEP; and (iii) for incidents involving a student with an IEP who is dysregulated, school building administrators should only request SRO law enforcement assistance after making reasonable efforts to comply with any de-escalation techniques described in the student’s BIP; and
● SROs shall exercise force consistent with law and DCSO policy, and restraint and seclusion of students by SROs must be avoided to the greatest extent possible without endangering the safety of students and staff. SROs shall also make reasonable efforts to comply with de-escalation techniques described in a student’s BIP, if any, before employing restraint or seclusion against a student.
"De-escalation or other types of interventions would have been more appropriate," said Neel. "The officers basically required that our client come with them because they wanted to question and there was no need for this intervention."
The suit alleged the officers left the boy handcuffed and alone for two hours, failed to seek medical attention for him even though they were aware that he was banging his head on a plexiglass partition in the patrol car. The lawsuit also claimed officers took him to a youth detention center, where he was held on $25,000 bail.
Neel said the family is relieved with the settlement agreement.
"There's always some relief when something like this ends especially in a way that gives them some of the resolution they were looking for," said Neel.
According to sheriff's office and the school district, it is rare for an SRO to handcuff and arrest a student at school. Neel said the reason ACLU of Colorado had an interest in this case was to bring attention to the fact that these incidents happen "a lot" and it illustrated a re-occurring issue across school districts involving children with disabilities and children of color.
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