Collaborating for a cultural dance experience

SROs reinstated at Denver schools didn’t increase tickets and arrests

BY MELANIE ASMAR CHALKBEAT COLORADO

Tickets and arrests of students at 13 Denver Public Schools campuses were lower when police ofcers were not stationed inside the school buildings than when they were, according to state and local data from the 2019-20 and 2022-23 school years.

e data backs a key criticism of school resource o cers, which is that they increase tickets and arrests and feed the school-to-prison pipeline.

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance partners with Scandinavian choreographer for September performance

BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA

Cleo Parker Robinson grew up in the historic Rossonian Hotel in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, the Rossonian Hotel catered to touring

Black musicians during segregation. Parker Robinson lived in an apartment at the hotel, above a jazz lounge that hosted legendary Black musicians like Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. She would go to sleep every night hearing music being performed by artists from around the country and the globe, taking in their energy and dreaming about how she would one day make her mark on the world.

“As a child, it felt worldly to me. I was always hearing classical music, jazz music and music from all over the world,” Parker Robinson said. “It just made me want to bring the world together all the time. I always

VOICES: 12 | LIFE: 14 | CALENDAR: 11 felt like I wanted to be in the world. Growing up there was destiny.”

Parker Robinson has certainly made her mark on the world, particularly through her founding of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (CPRD). Based in Denver, it is one of the world’s most well-known, reputable dance companies. With her company, she aims to honor the African Diaspora, explore the human condition, champion social justice, unite people of all ages and races, and ultimately celebrate the complexity of life through movement.

As part of her mission, CPRD each

But when SROs were reintroduced on those 13 campuses for the last two months of the 2022-23 school year, after a shooting inside East High School, the monthly average of tickets and arrests did not go up, according to data from the Denver Police Department.

East High student Stella Kaye has a theory as to why.

When Kaye, a 16-year-old junior, thought about the data on SROs, “I thought about, Wow, they probably know how many people don’t want them to be there,” she said.

“So if they start arresting kids left and right, it would not look good for the police or DPS. It’s almost like they had to be on their best behavior. It’s like they were put in

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SPINNING OUT STARS Program helps

young musicians shine year hosts an International Summer Dance Institute for dancers of all ages and ability levels. e Children’s Global Camp teaches students more than a dozen dance genres through cultural movement. Past genres have included hip hop, capoeira, Celtic, Polynesian, West African, jazz, hula, modern, South Korean, amenco, ballet, Mexican folklorico and East Indian. is year, CPRD welcomes omas Talawa Prestø, founder and artistic director of the Tabanka Dance Ensemble based in Oslo, Norway. He is visiting as a guest choreographer and teacher of his Talawa technique of dance. ciation of Blacks in Dance, he was so hungry and so present. I connected with him immediately.” tember performances, said Parker Robinson.

For more advanced dancers, CPRD o ers intensive master classes with some of dance’s most in uential artists. Guest choreographers come from all over the world to work with CPRD dancers during the International Summer Dance Institute.

Prestø’s Tabanka Dance Ensemble was founded in order to promote and represent the existence of Black personhood and identity in Norway and Scandinavia. As one of the leading institutions of African Diaspora dance in Europe and the Nordic countries, Tabanka seeks to advance the sector through sharing knowledge, practices and advocating for equity within the European and Nordic art sectors, as well as society at large.

Tabanka Dance Ensemble dancers specialize in African and Caribbean dance practices. ey are Scandinavian pioneers, carving a space for Black and Brown dance artists and challenging the normativity of the northern European dance and arts eld. Each dancer is also trained as a youth and community worker, and is highly committed to equity and inclusion, and work to ensure that economy, race, ethnicity and culture are not a barrier to participation.

In addition to Parker Robinson’s “Firebird,” Prestø will present his original work, “Catch a Fire.” Inspired by both Parker Robinson and Bob Marley lyrics, the piece will be perfectly juxtaposed to “Firebird.”

“Bob Marley’s lyrics are all about consequence. ey’re about anyone in power catching the consequences of their actions. So all of the songs in the piece kind of have this commonality,” said Prestø. “‘Catch a Fire’ is also about catching the re that Cleo (Parker Robinson) has created. It’s about carrying on the torch to the next generation.”

Black representation in dance

For both Cleo Parker Robinson Dance and the Tabanka Dance Ensemble, Black representation in dance is of critical importance.

“ omas Prestø and I discovered that we have this connection, this powerful connection,” said Parker Robinson. “I’d been curious about Norway for a while. When I previously visited Iceland, I only met one Black person. When I met omas and he said he was from Norway, I said, ‘no way, I didn’t think there are any Black folks in Norway.’ When I met him at the International Asso-

Prestø said he felt the same about meeting Parker Robinson.

“Cleo Parker Robinson has been a lighthouse and inspiration to us across the Atlantic,” said Prestø. “Fate, God and the ancestors have brought the opportunity for us to work together. Together we will afrm dance as a catalyst for social justice and a refuge for the oppressed. rough movement yesterday arrives today, and brings tomorrow.”

‘Firebird’ and ‘Catch a Fire’ e Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble will be performing on Sept. 16-17 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver, along with select members of the Tabanka Dance Ensemble. e program will include three performances: “Firebird,” choreographed by Parker Robinson; “Catch a Fire,” choreographed by Prestø; and the third performance was yet to be announced as of Colorado Community Media’s press deadline.

“To see this combination of what we’re doing with the Tabanka dancers from another culture is real education,” said Parker Robinson. “People get to embrace this beautiful thing of music and dance that we’re all a part of.”

Parker Robinson’s performance of “Firebird” will be set amid the enchanting Hawaiian islands, presenting an unconventional concept that departs from the traditional Slavic versions of the ballet. e essence of Pelé — the powerful Goddess of the Volcano — permeates the performance and introduces the presence of historical gures like King Kamehameha and Queen Lili’uokalani, paying homage to their signi cant contributions to Hawaiian history.

“I was invited to teach on the big island in Hawaii,” Parker Robinson said. “I didn’t know much about the culture at the time. Once I started working there, they invited me to dance on the edge of a volcano. I was terri ed (but) it was of the most invigorating, close-to-death experiences I’ve ever had. en I started teaching there, at the volcano, every year for 10 years. Hawaiian culture on the Big Island is just so alive.” is experience inspired Parker Robinson, and in 1997, she choreographed “Firebird” for the Colorado Symphony, working with Marin Alsop, who was the principal conductor at the time.

“ e dancers I have now never did that version of ‘Firebird’ with me, so I’ve reconstructed it” for the Sep-

“Growing up, we didn’t see enough of ourselves in any of the media. I think it is very important to read about — and to understand — our culture from a deeper and broader perspective,” said Parker Robinson. “Growing up, what we were seeing in the media was pretty degrading and it wasn’t very realistic of who we were. We had a tremendous desire to know more about our culture. In Denver, we began to build a place for ourselves. Most of our young people didn’t have opportunities to work, to create, to be paid, to develop. I think for young people, this has become an opportunity to continue to evolve.”

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Prestø mirrors Parker Robinson’s sentiment.

“ ere is a weird paradox of this idea that Blacks naturally and inherently sing, and that we have natural rhythm. But at the same time, (that) we don’t have culture and our dance is just at a body level — it’s not cerebral, it’s not intelligent. It is something we do by instinct, something we’re born with,” said Prestø. “Black dance is important because it reclaims intelligence and reclaims culture. It a rms it for the Black body. at is an aspect that we don’t talk about enough. We have to counter that image that is still there.”

Both Parker Robinson and Prestø are looking forward to sharing their work with the community this September.

“We all have that re energy that helped us survive the pandemic. We all had that re saying, ‘I want to live, I want to be alive, I want to dance, I want to sing, I want to nd my passion,’” Parker Robinson said. “You’ll nd that re in the work. I think that kind of re empowers people and helps build community.”

To their place a little bit.”

It’s a theory shared by parents, students, advocates, and elected ocials on both sides of the issue. ose who support the return of SROs point to the data as a hopeful sign that students won’t be overpoliced. ose opposed to SROs are skeptical that two months of data, at a time when school safety was closely watched, proves that anything will be di erent.

When school starts in Denver next month, SROs will be back at the same 13 high school campuses. e data from the 2019-20 and 2022-23 school years provides a window — albeit a limited one — into what parents and students can expect.

DPS had SROs starting in the 1990s. In the 2019-20 school year, SROs were stationed at 18 middle and high schools. ose 18 campuses included the 13 that will have an SRO this fall.

In 2019-20, there were 30 student arrests and 160 tickets issued on those 13 campuses, according to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, which uses data from law enforcement agencies and school districts to track student interactions with police.

In the summer of 2020, amid nationwide protests against racist policing, the Denver school board unanimously voted to end DPS’ contract with the Denver Police Department. e 18 SROs were phased out of schools the following year, and gone by June 2021. e pandemic made it di cult to assess the impact of removing SROs. e 2020-21 school year was largely remote for high school students, and the following year, 2021-22, was interrupted by returns to remote learning as COVID variants spiked. is past school year, 2022-23, was the rst prolonged test of in-person school without SROs. Data from the Denver Police Department shows that arrests and tickets at the 13 campuses were lower this past year than in 2019-20 when the campuses had SROs. e 2022-23 data includes the months of April and May, when SROs were temporarily placed at the 13 campuses following a shooting inside East High on March 22. A 17-year-old student shot and injured two deans before eeing and taking his own life.

In 2022-23, there were 18 student arrests at the 13 campuses, compared to 30 in 2019-20 for those same campuses — a 40% decrease. Similarly, there were 75 tickets issued to students at the 13 campuses this past year, compared to 160 in 2019-20 — a 53% decrease.

A majority of the tickets — 57 of the 75 — were for assault or public ghting.

After SROs were reinstated, the number of tickets and arrests at the

13 campuses held steady at about 10 incidents per month across all 13 campuses, the data shows. Most of the incidents were tickets. Only two students, both 15 years old, were arrested in that time period: one for third-degree assault and one for indecent exposure, according to the data.

School board member Scott Baldermann wrote the policy to reintroduce SROs. e policy includes a requirement that DPS monitor the number of times SROs ticket or arrest students to ensure marginalized students aren’t disproportionately targeted.

Before SROs were removed, Black students were targeted more often. In 2018-19, one in four tickets or arrests involved Black DPS students, even though only about one in seven students were Black, state data showed. e monitoring is meant to safeguard against racist policing.

“Now they’re being watched,” Baldermann said.

But the 2022-23 data also shows a disproportionality. White students were underrepresented in tickets and arrests, while Black students were overrepresented. A third of tickets and arrests in 2022-23 involved Black students, but only 14% of DPS students are Black.

Steve Katsaros, an East High parent who helped form a safety advocacy group after the March shooting, is supportive of SROs. But he said the bigger issue is DPS’ rules for when educators can suspend or expel stu- dents or call the police. ose rules are spelled out in a chart known as the discipline matrix, which DPS amended in 2021 to limit calls to police.

“ e elephant in the room is that the discipline matrix says educators cannot refer to [the Denver Police Department],” Katsaros said.

Given the changes to the discipline matrix and other factors, such as the e ects of the pandemic on students’ behavior, Katsaros said it’s hard to draw conclusions by comparing data from before and after remote learning. “ e data can be twisted,” he said.

Elsa Bañuelos-Lindsay is also skeptical of the data. She is the executive director of Movimiento Poder, an advocacy organization that strongly opposed the return of SROs.

“Our worry as an organization is we will see an increase … in the criminalization of [Black, Indigenous, people of color] working-class young people,” Bañuelos-Lindsay said, and “a lot of schools relying on policing to deal with issues that should be dealt with in schools, like mental health.”

Seventeen-year-old Skye O’Toole is a student at Denver School of the Arts, which doesn’t have an SRO. At a closed-door school board meeting held the day after the East High shooting, Superintendent Alex Marrero said DSA had turned down the o er of an SRO this past spring, a

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