How the Avon Police Department’s innovative approach to training keeps the community safe

The Avon Police Department is taking unique steps to ensure the safety of the town’s residents and visitors.

Avon is the only police department in the state that requires all its officers to complete four specific de-escalation trainings.

“What you’re getting as Avon police officers isn’t an Avon police officer. You’re really getting four or five officers per officer,” said Coby Cosper, Avon’s deputy police chief, at the May 27 Avon Town Council meeting.

All Avon officers go through Crisis Intervention Training, along with three other trainings: Ethical Decision Making Under Stress, Active Bystandership in Law Enforcement and Integrated Communications and Tactics.

“Many other agencies in the state might have one of these. Maybe a couple other people have a second. But we’re the only agency that have 100% of our on the road officers trained in (all three),” Cosper said. “You don’t get this anywhere else in Colorado.”

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Five years ago, Gov. Jared Polis appointed Avon Police Chief Greg Daly to the Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training board, “the regulatory policing board for the state of Colorado,” Daly said in an interview with the Vail Daily.

The board tries to find solutions that “give skills that make officers safer and community members safer,” Daly said.

Cosper learned while speaking at a Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training conference this spring that Avon is the only police department in Colorado that requires all its officers to be trained in four areas of de-escalation.

“At the end of the day, if we have safe, well-skilled, professional officers who can de-escalate situations, then that keeps our community safe and keeps the officer safe. Everybody wins,” Daly said.

Avon’s history of de-escalation

“De-escalation has become a much-used term, especially in the last five years,” Daly said. “We at the Avon Police Department have been embracing de-escalation for many, many years prior to it.”

For the last 10 years, the Avon Police Department has been putting all its police officers through Crisis Intervention Training, a nationally recognized training standard for law enforcement. The 40-hour course educates officers on the multitude of mental health conditions they may encounter and then puts them through live scenarios with trained actors to practice their new skills.

“The main purpose of the training is active listening,” Daly said. “The big thing about dealing with people in any type of crisis, be it mental health or otherwise, is to pause and listen.”

Ethical Decision Making Under Stress, which was developed by Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training, challenges officers to understand how they react — physically, mentally, emotionally and morally — under stress.

Through Active Bystandership in Law Enforcement, Avon officers are “trained to identify emotional intelligence in themselves and others,” including “be able to regulate their own emotions so they can regulate other people’s emotions,” Cosper said. 

Avon has integrated the training into its regular practices by empowering all members of the department to tap out their co-officer if they feel a situation needs a different approach.

Integrated Communications and Tactics teaches officers how to give themselves more time to defuse tense situations when dealing with a person in crisis by creating distance between themselves and the person.

All Avon police officers also attend SWAT school, even though they do not all serve on Eagle County’s SWAT team.

“That’s a decision that I made eight, 10 years ago,” Daly said.

Daly has been actively involved in SWAT for 22 years, including serving as the SWAT commander for eight years. “The rationale for a SWAT team is to bring crisis situations to a peaceful resolution,” Daly said. “Everything around a SWAT team is built to have officers who have advanced skills, to be able to resolve high-risk, dangerous situations … I send our patrol officers to SWAT school for the exact same reason — to give them more skills when they are dealing with those more complex, critical situations.”

The primary goal of putting Avon officers through so much training is to promote community safety, Daly said.

“By giving our officers … skills, giving them equipment, giving them technology to keep them safe, they’re in a much better space to professionally serve our community if they are confident in their skills, their training, their equipment and their leadership,” he said.

In 2024, the Avon Police Department conducted 2,085 traffic stops and 440 arrests.

Avon police officers “responded to resistance” just 17 times in 2024. “We are proud of those statistics,” Daly said. “It is a pretty unique situation that in the (more than) 400 arrests that we’re involved in … that we are able to de-escalate a vast majority of those aggressive individuals.”

This comes, in part, from Avon’s specific attitude toward corrective enforcement. “Our philosophical approach is behavioral change,” Daly said. “We have a particular approach to traffic stops and we use it the same way every single time. For the most part, it’s a positive interaction.”

Avon pioneers use of body camera-reviewing AI

The department is also the first Colorado customer of Truleo, an assistive artificial intelligence platform that aims to make law enforcement more efficient.

“We take pride in constantly seeking out technology, constantly seeking out things that we can do to benefit our community by making our officers more efficient, more professional, more safe,” Daly said.

The Avon Police Department uses Truleo for three services: transcribing dictated police reports, transcribing reports based on body camera footage and reviewing, evaluating and summarizing the entire department’s body camera footage.

Avon has had a body camera policy since 2015. “We were one of the first agencies to go with body cameras within Eagle County,” Daly said.

The state of Colorado began requiring all local law enforcement officers and state patrol troopers to wear body cameras in July 2023.

“Any criminal investigation, any interaction with a member of the public that is based on either a complaint or a self-initiated activity where we believe some sort of criminal activity is afoot,” Daly said. “We are not required by law if we are just having a general citizen interaction … but any time that we are taking any law enforcement action.”

Truleo analyzes the body camera footage for professionalism and for use of force.

Avon officers are required to document use of force that occurs during their shift, but the AI keeps them accountable. “It’s a backup to ensure that we are doing our due diligence regarding our reporting,” Daly said.  

The artificial intelligence analysis is then referred to police department supervisors.

The program also flags when officers go above and beyond the basic professionalism required by the job, allowing for the officer to be commended, and, sometimes, for their behavior to be used as an example.

Through Truleo, the Avon Police Department has reviewed more than 11,000 hours of body camera footage since fall 2024.

“We are not perfect … but that is our constant goal,” Daly said.