Armed police officers to be back at Denver's East High School
Denver Superintendent Dr. Alex Marrero said on Wednesday he wants armed police back at Denver High Schools, supporting the return of school resource officers after the shooting of two school administrators and the recent killing of an East High School student.
The Denver Board of Education in June of 2020 voted unanimously in favor of ending the contract with Denver police that paid for the officers on site at Denver schools. In the letter to the school board Marrero wrote he is committed to having two armed police officers from the Denver Police Department at East High School and an armed officer at each comprehensive high school. Marrero recognized he was going against the board's prior wishes.
"I can no longer stand on the sidelines. I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions," he said.
All day at East High School Wednesday after the shooting, parents and students brought up the topic of school resource officers.
"It could have been avoided if there was a cop there to prevent anything like this from happening. Or at least to scare the people from committing crimes like these," said Santos Garcia, brother of Luis Garcia, who died at the beginning of the month, two weeks after he was shot while in a car just outside of East High School.
The call for the return of school resource officers resonated with parents and students.
"It shouldn't happen this way. They need SROs at that school. They've had them in the past when my older son was there and I never felt worried about sending my son to that school," said parent Mary Stromberg.
"They're a deterrent," explained former East High School Principal Andy Mendelsberg. "You're on Colfax, you're next to City Park. I know our police officers being there kept people away from our kids," he said about SROs during the time he was principal 2011-2017. "They were never a part of the discipline. That's not how it was set up. That's not what DPD thought as they were putting officers in the school. It was more of like we have a presence."
While Mendelsberg left before the board's decision to end the SRO program he was still in touch with other administrators.
"They felt they didn't have a voice. Like this was happening without really listening to principals."
Now he believes preventing more shootings in and around the school is not as simple as adding SROs back in.
"You know the easy answer is, 'Oh let's absolutely put police officers back in the school and everything will be OK.' I don't believe that to be true... Pushing it forward, how do we keep officers in the building with an understanding in the community of how we're going to work together differently?"
And that means a variety of things to contain school shootings.
But as the SROs return, there is a hope that it will stop some from considering crime around the school, or criminal behavior at the school.
