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Biography: Special Agent Colleen Brooks graduated Summa Cum Laude in December of 1996 with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from LaRoche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She worked in the mental health field for 3 years and was hired as a police officer by the Dodge City Police Department in January of 2000. She received 2 letters of commendation in 2000 for her perseverance in investigations she completed her first year as an officer. She became a Field Training Officer and Taser Instructor in 2004, was assigned to the Detective Bureau in October of 2004 and was promoted to Detective in January of 2005. She became a trained forensic interviewer of children in 2005 and was an active member of the Meadowlark House Child Advocacy Center multi-disciplinary team from 2004 - 2022. Detective Brooks earned a Master's Degree in Management in 2006, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. She was promoted from Detective to Sergeant in 2007. From 2007 - 2022 she was the appointed liaison between the police department and the Crisis Center of Dodge City, working to improve relationships between the two agencies. Also in 2007, she received the, "Outstanding Service to Victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault," award from the Crisis Center of Dodge City. That same year she also received two Distinguished Service Awards from the police department, one for her dedicated service to over 100 child victims of sexual abuse, and the other for responding to the Greensburg tornado. In 2008 she was appointed by Governor Kathleen Sebelius' Office to be a Southwest Kansas Regional Domestic Violence Law Enforcement Instructor and taught many classes to police and the public on domestic violence through the GTEAP (Grants to Encourage Arrest) program. She worked as a Sergeant in the patrol division from 2007-2010 and was then assigned to the Detective Bureau as Detective Sergeant. In 2009 she became a CVSA Operator (Computer Voice Stress Analyst) and provided truth verification exams in both criminal cases and for pre-employment purposes from 2009 - 2022. In 2010 Sergeant Brooks received the Officer of the Year award from the police department and in 2011 was promoted to Lieutenant. At that time, she was assigned as the Detective Bureau Commander, supervising the Detective Bureau, and the Evidence/Property section of the police department. In 2013 she was appointed by the Kansas Attorney General's office to assist in creating and planning the statewide domestic violence training course and to teach portions of the course in the state of Kansas for law enforcement and prosecutors. In 2014 she partnered with Aequitas, the Prosecutor's Resource on Violence against Women, based in Washington D.C., and taught a class with them on advanced sexual assault investigations. She was also appointed in 2014 to the Kansas Childfirst Protocol team to discuss and implement changes to the forensic child interview protocol in the state of Kansas. In 2015 Lieutenant Brooks received two Certificates of Appreciation for Outstanding Contributions from Sam Brownback, the Governor of Kansas, for her recognition as a GTEAP Regional Trainer and for her presentation on Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault, presented at the Crime Victims' Rights conference in Wichita, Kansas. In 2016 she received the Attorney General's Outstanding Law Enforcement Victim Service Award from Attorney General Derek Schmidt in Topeka, Kansas at the Crime Victim's Rights Conference. Lieutenant Brooks was appointed to the Governor's Advisory Council on Domestic & Sexual Violence Response - Law Enforcement Subcommittee in 2016, and in doing so she was directly involved with enhancing and completing the existing Kansas-specific multi-disciplinary advanced domestic violence and sexual assault curricula known as ICJR (Improving Criminal Justice Response). This statewide curriculum covers the areas of domestic violence, including strangulation, the neurobiology of trauma, and sexual violence. Lieutenant Brooks became a founding member of the Ford County Mental Health Committee in 2016, along with Ford County Sheriff Bill Carr, Ford County Fire Chief Rob Boyd, and local therapists Vicki Broz and Deb Moffitt. The committee provided crisis debriefs, therapy and education to all first responders in the area of mental health to prevent any first responder suicides. The Committee also provided training to prepare first responders to handle a crisis involving persons experiencing a mental illness. In 2016 Lieutenant Brooks began the additional duty of supervising the School Resource Officer Unit. She worked closely with SROs and local schools to improve communication and relations between the police department and the school district. In 2017 Lieutenant Brooks created a local Domestic Violence Task Force comprised of police officers, detectives, victim advocates, dispatchers, records clerks, and process servers, in order to improve response to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. In 2018 Lieutenant Brooks became a trained member of the FBI Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, in response to cases of missing and kidnapped children. In 2020 Lieutenant Brooks was promoted to Captain, continuing in her role as Detective Bureau Commander. In 2022 Captain Brooks received the Above & Beyond Award, from the Meadowlark House Child Advocacy Center, for her dedicated work with child victims from 2004 - 2022. Captain Brooks left the police department in 2022 to join the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) as a Special Agent. She is currently assigned to the Child Victim Unit and the West Field Investigation Division of the KBI. To date, she has completed 261 forensic interviews of children, been involved in hundreds of domestic violence investigations, over 600 sexual assault investigations, and over 120 death investigations. She is an active member of local Sexual Assault Response Teams, and Child Advocacy Center multi-disciplinary teams, and serves as an expert witness in the areas of domestic violence, strangulation, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and physical child abuse. In 2023 Special Agent Brooks began her pursuit of a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology at Fort Hays State University, which is currently in progress. Special Agent Brooks is an instructor for the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center (KLETC), the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence (KCSDV), and HomeFront Protective Group Inc., Law Enforcement Training, based in New York City.
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