Denver Board Does Complete 180 on School Resource Officers Following East High Shooting

Denver School Board members and backers of the June 2020 vote to get rid of school resource officers, aka SROs, have done a complete 180 regarding armed guards on DPS campuses. On March 23, in the wake of the East High shootings, the board announced it was putting armed police back in schools for the remainder of the year.

The board made the decision during an hours-long executive session on March 23. A number of the members had already signaled their approval of the SROs returning in online statements and social media posts the night before and early Thursday morning.

According to board vice president Auon'tai M. Anderson, there will be at least two "full-time" armed guards at every DPS high school for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year. The board will require each officer to be "appropriately trained in use of firearms, de-escalation techniques, policing in a school environment, knowledgeable of the school community they intend to serve, and skilled in community policing," Anderson says.

Denver Police Department officials told Westword that the officers have already been chosen, with many having been previously selected to be liaisons for DPS schools.

"So they already have relationships with school administrators and have familiarity with the schools," a DPD spokesperson noted. "Some of these officers previously served as SROs, as well."

According to police officials, "DPD's SROs were previously held to CASRO (Colorado Association of SROs) and NASRO (National Association of SROs) standards. If DPD officers continue to be in DPS high schools, the department will make sure they re-certify."

For the new SRO program, school board members have asked to receive reports on a monthly basis concerning on-campus ticketing and arrests to ensure that armed officers are at the schools only for security purposes and not used for disciplinary issues that arise.

The move to bring back the armed officers comes after DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero announced in a March 22 letter to the school board, sent just hours after two deans were shot, that he was adding an armed officer at every Denver high school after the East High shooting that left two deans wounded.

"No student or employee should have to carry the fear of potential violence when they walk into our buildings each day," Marrero told boardmembers.

One of the biggest about-faces came from Anderson. After the vote to remove the SROs in 2020, Anderson took to his Twitter account and said: "The Denver School Board has voted 7-0 to END the contract with the Denver Police Department! — WE DID IT! #BlackLivesMatter."

The decision came in the wake of protests over the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. The board ultimately ended the DPS contract with the Denver Police Department to provide at least eighteen school resource officers around the district.

At the time, many residents voiced their concerns regarding the move, saying it would eventually backfire. One Twitter user, @j035ich5pach, specifically told Anderson: "You just put a big bullseye on schools and made them less safe for your students."

Even so, as recently as last month, Anderson told Westword that there was "not a scenario, at this time, where we at the board would entertain the reinstatement of school resource officers."

But then came the shootings on March 22. "The Board of Education supports the decision of Superintendent Marrero to work in partnership with local law enforcement to create safer learning spaces across Denver Public Schools for the remainder of this school year," Anderson tweeted on Thursday morning, March 23. "In addition we will continue to work collaboratively with our community partners including law enforcement and our local & state legislature to make our community safer."

DPS announced through its social media pages on Thursday that the district would be observing a "Mental Health Day" on Friday, March 24, as a way to help students "process" what's going on. Spring break is the following week.

Students have been calling for the board to come up with a security system to replace the SROs banned in 2020 by the board.

William Reynolds, a junior at East, says their re-implementation "is not a bad idea at all." He thinks the role of security should be up to trained professionals, not people like the deans who were shot.

"There should be people who are trained to do this stuff," he tells Westword.

However, many students — including Reynolds — are sensitive to the often negative consequences of having police present in schools, including overt criminalization of misbehavior by minority students. Reynolds is on the same page as the school board when it comes to police having a role on campuses — and that's solely for security.

"They need to know where they stand," he says, adding that they shouldn't be there "to hand out citations like they did previously, like five years ago, for minor offenses, drug abuse, stuff like that."

Albus Brooks, a former Denver City Council member who has a child that goes to East and was at the school that morning, tells Westword that he thinks the schools and DPD should return to the practice of community policing, in which police are a part of a community rather than enforcers for it.

"As a parent, I'm sad and real angry," Brooks says. "But for whatever reason — and I think it's a policy failure on all of us as adults — we've been seeing these incidents happen."