The floor
Court Security Officer
The certification the law requires within an officer’s first year on the assignment.
SB 42 and the standards
What the law requires of a court security officer. And what it doesn't.
For the coordinator who has been told their people need a certification and wants to know what that means before spending the budget.
The specialist
Court Security Specialist
The elective path. Seven courses in one week, then an application to TCOLE for a separate certificate.
What SB 42 is
SB 42 is the Judge Julie Kocurek Judicial and Courthouse Security Act, passed by the 85th Texas Legislature in 2017. It followed the 2015 attack on Judge Kocurek outside her home in Austin, and it changed what Texas expects of the people who protect its courts.
It did three things that matter to an agency:
- It put a court security committee in every county, chaired by the local administrative district judge and drawing in the sheriff’s office and the commissioners court, with the job of establishing the policies and procedures that keep the courthouse secure.
- It required a court security officer to hold a court security certification within their first year on the assignment. That requirement is codified in Government Code chapter 158, and it is what sends a coordinator looking for this training.
- It required court security incidents to be reported to the Office of Court Administration within three business days. Every agency in Texas now files into the same registry.
What it requires, and what it does not
The certification requirement is satisfied by the eight-hour Court Security Officer course, TCOLE course 10999. TCOLE’s own bulletin on the subject says it plainly: to meet the mandate of SB 42, a person has to complete the eight-hour course. That is the floor.
SB 42 does not require the forty-hour course. The Court Security Specialist certificate is a separate, elective path: seven TCOLE courses, forty hours, and then an application to TCOLE under 37 TAC §221.41. Nothing in the law makes an agency send an officer through it. Agencies do it because eight hours makes an officer compliant and forty hours makes them capable, and because the certificate is a separate record of that on their Commission file.
Two certificates, on one record
TCOLE’s bulletin describes the Court Security Officer certification and the Court Security Specialist certification as two separate and distinct certificates on an officer’s Commission record. One is the legal minimum. The other says the officer chose to become a specialist in the work. An officer can hold both. The forty-hour course is how they earn the second.
Two of the seven courses, the practical exercise and the practical firearms courses, cannot be delivered online. That is TCOLE’s rule, written into the curriculum, and it is why the Specialist path is taught in a room and on a range. The seven courses, with TCOLE’s exact titles and hours, are on the 40-hour course page.
The recognized standards
A court security committee is not writing from scratch. Four documents carry most of the weight, and a courthouse will be measured against them after an incident whether or not anyone read them before.
- The CCJ/COSCA Court Security Handbook: Ten Essential Elements for Court Security and Emergency Preparedness. Published by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators. Ten elements, each with a self-audit checklist, that describe what a secure court looks like.
- Steps to Best Practices for Court Building Security, from the National Center for State Courts. The operational companion: what to do at the entrance, in the courtroom, in chambers and in holding, and how to phase the work.
- The Texas Office of Court Administration courthouse security self-assessment. The state’s own checklist for Texas trial courts, and the one a Texas committee should fill out first.
- The U.S. Marshals Service judicial security standards. The federal reference for judicial protection and courthouse design, and the standard most state and county assessments borrow from.
Courthouse security assessments, measured against these standards.
The count
Texas courthouses are not getting quieter.
448Court security incidents reported to OCAFiscal year 2023
159The same count ten years earlierFiscal year 2013
127%Higher again in FY24 to dateTexas Office of Court Administration
Source: Texas Office of Court Administration, court security incident reporting under SB 42. The FY2023 count and the FY24 year-to-date comparison are from OCA’s Legislative Appropriations Request for FY2026 to 2027. The FY2013 count is from OCA’s FY2013 incident report.
What this means for a court security committee
The law sets a floor: a certified officer, a committee, a report when something happens. The committee decides what stands above the floor. Three questions settle most of it.
- Has the building been assessed against the standards, and does the committee have a written list of what to fix in what order?
- Have the officers on the court detail trained together, on the screening procedure, the response to a courtroom that goes bad, and the range, or has each of them taken eight hours alone at a desk?
- When something happens in your building, what do you want the record to say your people had?
Eight hours makes an officer compliant. Forty hours makes a detail.