As your Attorney General, one of my top responsibilities is ensuring the safety of you and your family. Over the last six years, I’ve prioritized the recruitment and effective training of law enforcement officers. As Governor, I will stay committed to this critical work.

This week, I will be in Fort Collins to join a first-of-its-kind gathering in Colorado focused on sharing best practices for law enforcement recruitment, training, and skills development. The Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) program, which I oversee, will host this event. The goal is to collaborate on equipping officers with the skills, training, and support they need to succeed and protect our communities during a time when we know public safety is a critical concern.

First, we must ensure we have enough police officers on the job. I have taken this fight to our state legislature, advocating for increased funding to recruit and retain officers and sheriffs. In the wake of the pandemic, many communities faced a shortage of law enforcement personnel, forcing them to make difficult decisions about when and how to respond to crimes. As a result, victims—like one individual I spoke to recently—may spend too much time on hold for 911 or waiting for an officer to respond and investigate a crime, if they come at all. That’s a threat to public safety we must address. Equally important is ensuring that police officers are well-trained to meet the demands of modern-day law enforcement. To that end, I led POST’s efforts to redesign and improve our state’s law enforcement academy training—a reform that hadn’t been undertaken in 40 years.

I announced this project during a graduation speech at the Colorado Mountain Law Enforcement Training Academy in June 2023. Here’s that speech along with an image of our graduating cadets.

Redesigning the curriculum for how we train officers to prepare them for the challenges they face each day is grounded on two key principles: (1) providing more hands-on, experiential training at law enforcement academies, and (2) ensuring officers develop the full range of skills and mindsets necessary to succeed. This includes critical “hard skills” such as driving, firearms use, and arrest control. And it means fostering greater empathy and emotional awareness, which are essential for properly supporting victims and de-escalating dangerous situations.

In Colorado, like our nation, we face a series of challenges. I am committed to showing up, listening, and doing the hard work needed to make things better here. I am honored to collaborate with Colorado law enforcement and community leaders to make life safer for you and your family. This starts with providing our law enforcement officers with the tools, training, and resources they need to succeed.

Thanks for your support in doing this critical work.