DENVER — School resource officers have been back in Denver Public Schools for a full semester now. And so far, those officers are staying busy.
Data from the school district shows SROs arrested five students and ticketed 25 others in the first half of the school year. Ten of those instances resulted in charges for things like DUI, car theft, assault and possession of a gun.
This is the first full semester SROs have spent in Denver schools in years. The school board voted in 2020 to remove Denver Police officers from schools amid social justice protests. That decision was also based on past data that showed most of the students who were ticketed and arrested were Black and Latino.
Then in 2023, after the fatal shooting of an East High student and the shooting of two administrators at the same school just a few weeks later, some parents and school leaders called for stricter safety measures.
The DPS Board of Education voted over the summer to bring back SROs full-time to district campuses.
Questions remain about whether Black and Latino students continue to be overpoliced in schools. Right now, there's only a small set of data from these few months SROs have been back on the job in schools.
The data from the district shows that 27 of the 30 incidents involved Black and Hispanic students. Just two incidents involved white students.
See the full SRO activity report provided by Denver Public Schools:
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