Over the summer changes occurred and Mountain View swapped Officer DeLima for a new SRO, Brandon Casterline.
Officer Casterline is excited for all the new opportunities Mountain View will bring him, including the challenge of being in a high school. “I’m excited for the change. I’m excited for the challenge…This is definitely different than what I had been doing for the last 14 years. And so I’m really excited for that change in the challenge of being a resource officer… It’s a different dynamic as far as, you know, working with educators and teachers and then working with kids all day.” He also mentioned that in all the excitement, he is equally nervous about the same thing considering he is new to the position and has a lot to learn about working with high school students.
In his position here at Mountain View, Officer Casterline hopes to not only be here to keep us safe, but to be here as a real resource. “I don’t want people just to think of me as the guy that they have to talk to when they’re in trouble…I want them to come to me and talk to me. I want to be that resource.” He has already dedicated himself to being a welcome sight for the students and making his presence known. His office is always open to students when he is there and if you can’t find him there, he’s somewhere around the school, building up relationships. “I always wanna try to greet the kids at the door…talk to kids in the hallway…Go to lunch and try to strike up a conversation with kids…I wanna go out of my way and be that guy that’s putting that foot forward and trying to communicate and start and grow those relationships”
Outside of school, Officer Casterline has a pretty impressive and interesting story. He grew up in the Five Points area of Denver which used to be rougher. His biological parents were involved in gangs and drugs so at a young age he was taken away by the state. “I grew up…around gangs, bad influences and that kind of stuff. I never got into that kind of stuff even though I was a knucklehead…I ran from cops and that kind of stuff and just kind of messed around and wasted a lot of valuable time in my life.”
At 13 he was adopted but left home at 17 due to a bad home life, eventually he decided to build himself back up. “I decided to kind of get it together. And ended up getting my GED, [and going to] police academy…I always knew I wanted to be a police officer.” He built himself up and gave himself a good life. Among being a police officer, he is also on the SWAT team with experience as a crisis negotiator. As well as having a successful career, he has a successful personal life with a wife, three kids, and a dog named Champ. Building himself up like that from so little, Officer Casterline ended the interview with a message to all the students.
“You don’t have to do it the hard way. My story is an exception not the rule…High school is for you, high school is for you kids to make sure that you’re ready to go live the life that you wanna live…Take advantage of it. Have fun because it’s supposed to be fun. Go to the events. Join a club. Hang out with people…I think a lot of people think that high school is the whole world and forget to see that there’s so much more to common life. You know, a lot of adults, they think fondly back on high school, but they probably don’t even know half the people that they went to high school with. So just remember that this is for you. It’s not to impress your friends or impress a girl or impress a boy. You know, [just] have fun in high school.”
P.S. In case you ever wondered what the SRO gets to keep on their person, I asked. He has his pistol on his hip, 2 extra mags for the pistol, a taser, two sets of handcuffs, a body cam, a tourniquet with some scissors, a radio, surgical gloves, a mag for a rifle, and extra triage safety inside the vest.
