Madison County Schools has stood up its own police department ahead of the new school year, putting armed, sworn officers with full arrest powers on campuses across the district. The force is led by Chief Ben Wilcox, a 26-year law enforcement veteran who was appointed by the Madison County Board of Education to head the new agency.
The school board voted in March to establish the Madison County Schools Police Department, according to WBONTV, which reported that Wilcox previously served as Kentucky's first State School Security Marshal and as an instructor at the state's Department of Criminal Justice Training. As reported by FOX 56 News, the district introduced its new school resource officers this August, with all officers reporting directly to Wilcox, who in turn answers to the Madison County School Board.
Two months after the board's initial vote, in May, it formally created and ratified 19 full-time SRO positions, approved job descriptions, and adopted a dedicated salary schedule for the department, per CivIQ. Chief Wilcox described the new district police force as a “force multiplier” meant to work alongside local law enforcement while still maintaining dedicated beats on each campus. Madison County Schools has said its goal is to keep students, staff, and visitors safe, and that its resource officers fill many roles around their school buildings.
Filling Out the Roster
By August, the district had hired 16 of its 19 planned full-time officers, each assigned to a single-school beat with full law enforcement and arrest powers, according to a report from The Edge. Three positions remain unfilled as the district enters the new school year, which Madison County Schools has said it expects to be an amazing and safe one.
Before launching its own force, the district had relied on a patchwork of contracts with three local law enforcement agencies — the Richmond Police Department, Berea Police Department, and Madison County Sheriff's Office — to supply school resource officers to its campuses. The Edge's report notes that several officers previously stationed in Madison County schools through those third-party arrangements opted to join the new district department rather than stay with their original agencies.
A Statewide Shift Toward In-House Policing
Madison County's move fits into a broader trend playing out across Kentucky. State lawmakers passed Senate Bill 120 in 2022, granting local school boards explicit legal authority to establish independent district police departments, according to the Legislative Research Commission. That law amended Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 158 to classify district police officers as sworn school resource officers, giving them the same authority as officers from municipal or county agencies.
As of August, 46 of Kentucky's 171 public school districts had established their own independent school police departments under that authority, the same Edge report found. State law requires every public school campus in Kentucky to have at least one certified SRO assigned to it, a mandate that has pushed districts away from competing for limited municipal and sheriff's office staffing and toward building their own dedicated forces.
That statutory requirement traces back to Kentucky's School Safety and Resiliency Act, also known as Senate Bill 1, which lawmakers enacted in 2019 following the 2018 shooting at Marshall County High School. The Kentucky Department of Education says the act created the Office of the State School Security Marshal and established statewide school safety requirements, including mandatory threat assessment teams and active-shooter training for certified school personnel.
Training and Support Built Into the Job
Kentucky statute requires school resource officers to complete 120 hours of specialized training through the state's Department of Criminal Justice Training, coursework that emphasizes youth engagement, mental health awareness, special needs student interaction, and trauma-informed practices, per The Edge's reporting. Statewide, Kentucky public schools employed 842 SROs as of August 2025 — more than double the number from 2019 — with 1,315 campuses meeting state safety compliance standards, according to figures from the Office of the Governor of Kentucky. The Office of the State School Security Marshal conducts unannounced annual audits to check that compliance.
Madison County Schools has also participated in the “Handle With Care” program since the 2017-2018 school year, a system that automatically alerts school officials when a student is present during a law enforcement incident outside of school, according to the Madison County School District. Notifications under that program are triggered by events such as traffic crashes, domestic violence calls, or domestic arrests, allowing schools to provide immediate support to affected students. District officials have said their school resource officers are intended to help maintain that same kind of safety for students and staff as the new department settles into its role across campuses this year.
