For their personal feel-goodery, the Denver School Board shoots three, kills one

For their personal feel-goodery, the Denver School Board shoots three, kills one, and endangers thousands at East High


Like many school boards, the Denver School Board years ago asked the police for help in quelling violence in the schools. The police succeeded to some extent.

So far, so good, though it’s a poor reflection on our society, our schools, our students, and their parents. In 1975, about 1% of schools had cops onsite. By a few years ago, it was over 50%.

The presence of cops did help. But the Denver School Board was disappointed that the encounters by the school police involved a disproportionate number of students of color.

That was no surprise to anyone paying attention to crime statistics. A disproportionate number of police encounters in society at large involve people of color, and so it’s natural that it would be the same in the schools.

All serious observers know that’s because a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by people of color. You can debate the reasons for that fact – you can even claim it’s all because of systemic racism, I suppose – but you cannot debate the fact itself. For example, it has been well documented that Black people commit murder at roughly seven-times the rate of white people. Most people murdered by Blacks are themselves Black.

The response of the Denver School Board was not to focus on the message that a disproportionate number of violent crimes are by students of color, but to shoot the messenger – the police. In a unanimous vote, they expelled the police from their schools in 2020 after a thuggy druggy Black person named Floyd was killed while resisting arrest far away in Minneapolis.

The implication was that all the cops in Denver schools, like the individual Minneapolis cop who killed Floyd, were targeting Blacks. Even the Black cops.

The school board’s shooting of the messenger failed to extirpate the message, however. Violence in Denver schools returned with a vengeance.

It culminated last week at East High, barely a mile from my downtown Denver flat. A student with a history of violence and illegal firearm possession was identified as a risk. The school administrators decided he had to be patted down to check for guns each morning when he appeared at school. Pause to consider whether a person that is such a risk that he needs a concealed weapon pat-down every morning should be in school even after the pat-down.

There were no longer any trained police officers onsite to conduct the pat-down of this “risk” individual, since, unlike him, they had been expelled. The school therefore assigned the job to two admin types. One held the title of “Dean of Culture” and the other held the title of “Restorative Practices Coordinator.”

I doubt these admins had attended Police Academy to learn the proper and safe procedure for patting down a person suspected of carrying a concealed firearm, and I doubt they themselves carried a firearm with which to defend themselves. But they did get a paycheck at taxpayer expense for being cultural and restorative.

The result was predictable to anyone not wishfully woke. As the admins conducted their amateur pat-down, they discovered the perp’s gun. He drew it and shot them both.

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