Josh Allison joins the Garfield Re-2 family as School Resource Officer

One of the many new faces you may have noticed in the first few weeks of school is Josh Allison, our new school resource officer stationed out of Rifle High School. He comes to us from the Rifle police force and joins his wife Jenna who teaches third grade at Highland Elementary.

Since graduating from Colorado Mesa University and joining the Rifle police force in 2019, Allison has made it his mission to not only keep residents safe but make a positive impact on the lives of everyone in our community. He takes this goal with him into his new role.

“You know, if I can have a positive influence as a police officer here at school, then hopefully when they get older, they will have respect for the law,” says Allison. “Hopefully my time here will help them realize that we're the good guys.”

Of course, Allison’s top priority is school safety, especially in the modern day and in education. But he hopes that he will get the opportunity to get into the classrooms and be a guest speaker from time to time in an effort to build strong relationships with students.

“One of the biggest things is bridging the gap between law enforcement and students,” says Allison. “Again, helping them realize that we as police officers are here to help them.”

Allison says the way his day-to-day duties will change depends on what calls come in and what incidents occur on the job. He will, however, respond to the middle school and elementary schools in addition to his service at Rifle High School.

“I do try and patrol the other schools when I can and go interact with the kids during recess or lunch,” says Allison. “Otherwise my work will depend on what calls come in that day.”

Since he started, Allison has been trying his best to come up with his own schedule. There was no school resource officer before him, so there was no one to walk him through the basics. Allison did attend training on the front range in the spring, and then also attended the SRO conference in Grand Junction over the summer.

“No one was there to walk me through this job, so I've been trying to figure it out on my own,” says Allison. “I created my own schedule where I'll do school zone enforcement in the morning at a certain location and then patrol at a different location and so on.”

Allison will have more training sessions throughout the year, and also has other duties as a police officer as well. He is a driving instructor, so he will teach driving class at the police department and around the city. There will also be times that he may assist with patrol calls that the department is handling at any given time.

In terms of what went into his training, Allison says the biggest thing was explaining to him his overall goal as to why he’s in the schools and why police officers are in the schools. He says there were discussions of different ideas as to what he and his colleagues can do as officers and as administrative staff to improve school environments.

“Overall, I’m looking forward to what I can do in terms of school safety but also building strong bonds between officers and students,” says Allison. “My goal is to make a difference in the kids’ lives and help them understand that police officers are here to help.”

Once again, we are grateful to have Allison starting in his new assignment and wish him luck throughout his time as School Resource Officer. When you see him, make sure to give Officer Allison a warm Re-2 welcome!