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 o cers were not stationed inside the school buildings than when they were, according to state and local data from the 201920 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.

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 their place a little bit.” 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. 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.

It’s a theory shared by parents, students, advocates, and elected o cials on both sides of the issue.

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.

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

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