A nationally recognized Utah police officer strongly urged a legislative task force Monday to vastly increase numbers of school resource officers in Utah public schools.
Chris Ruiz, a school resource officer at Pleasant Grove High School, told the Utah Legislature’s School Security Task Force, there are 256 SROs that serve Utah’s 1,083 public schools, which includes district and charter schools. Many officers are assigned to multiple schools.
Put another way, Utah’s public school enrollment in fall 2022 was 674,650 students, which means there was one school resource officer per every 2,635 students, although many Utah schools have none while other districts have at least one officer at every high school.
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