State law requires school districts to have a school resource officer on campus.

In addition to those SROs.

Warren County Public Schools now also has a detective on staff to investigate cases that need extra time and attention.

Our Laura Rogers has more about this from Bowling Green.

For school resource detective Josh Hughes, these high fives and hugs are a welcome addition to his daily routine.

Some of these kids here at my school, I see every single day, they stop by and talk to me every day.

Hughes came on board in July after a 24 year career in local law enforcement.

I start here most mornings.

I deal with the kids, interact with the kids just like any other SRO.

But unlike any other school resource, Officer Hughes will dive deeper into cases and crimes that threaten school safety, such as a troubling online post.

I'll go and get a search warrant from the social media.

I analyze the social media.

Anything that needs investigation outside of the school, they'll call me and I'll come in and help.

He'll also interview parents in cases of suspected abuse or neglect.

I can do the home is I can do the search warrants.

I can analyze the data.

And that allows the districts a couple dozen other school resource officers to stay on the job.

Monitoring safety and security at their assigned school.

We have a lot of years of experience in our SRO program.

So a lot of that stuff, they can handle themselves and they really could handle all of it themselves.

It's just it makes it hard for them when they have to leave the schools.

I wanted to make sure that we always had somebody readily available for any major investigation within the school system.

Warren County Sheriff Brett Hightower got the idea for a school resource detective after a couple of major incidents last year.

We had several phones involved in both these cases that we needed to kind of download look into for the kind of forensic examination of them.

He says having a dedicated detective on staff to handle those investigations adds to their multi-layer approach to school safety.

What we want to make sure is that we do the most thorough investigations when it involves our students in our schools.

It's also about building relationships with students and their families.

We can't separate school and home.

So if there's things going on inside of this kid's home, it will, of course, affect their behavior here at school.

I'm able to sometimes connect the families to the resources and then hopefully do things that help improve the kid's home life, which then improves their ability to perform at school.

These efforts often help strengthen trust and local law enforcement.

It's interesting.

My first day here, I had a kid that told me my daddy told me not to talk to police officers, and now this same kid stops by and gives me a hug every single morning.

Being in a school setting can also bring levity.

After working a particularly hard case, as recently happened for Hughes.

And so I went out on the jungle gym.

I was climbing the jungle gym with the kids.

I was pushing kids on swings.

And, you know, it's hard to stay down when you feel that laughter and you see the innocence of these kids.

And in a sense, he's working to preserve and protect.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.

Great story.

Laura Rogers Hughes is the first known school resource detective in the state.

Sheriff Hightower says other counties have expressed interest in hiring one as well.

He says it's a big help in a school district of 19,000 students.