It was 2016, and the Denver West head football coach was in his first season in the program as an assistant. By the time a Week 7 showdown against one of Class 2A’s powerhouses rolled around, he had already seen the signs of the program’s commitment issues: Players skipping practice. Players showing up late to games. Sparse attendance in the weight room.

But the reasoning one senior gave for missing the game against Faith Christian was on another level — even for a program that had one winning season over the two decades before Velasquez took the helm in 2023, jump-starting the Cowboys’ revival.

Coach, I’m not coming to the game. I have a haircut.

“I didn’t know what to say for a long minute,” Velasquez said. “Then I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? A haircut? This is a top-ranked team. These are the opportunities you dream about as a high school player.’ I couldn’t understand it.”

That culture is what Velasquez set out to change when he took the reins of the program from former head coach Leon Garcia, who is now an assistant coach and the school’s athletic director.

Velasquez started cutting kids who weren’t dedicated to the program. He instituted strict policies — miss three practices, you’re off the team. Miss after-school weights, you can’t practice. And, in tandem with Garcia, he’s instituted a rule since 2020 that if you have a single F — no matter what your overall GPA is — you are ineligible.

His tough-love approach has worked.

Denver West went 5-4 in ’23, then 7-3 last year while making the program’s This season, the Cowboys are again heading to the Class 2A playoffs, this time with an 8-1 record after beating D’Evelyn for the first time in school history in a 35-23 win on Friday at Trailblazer Stadium.

“We don’t have kids like that, ‘I have a haircut’ kid anymore,” Velasquez said. “People always ask me, ‘What’s the difference between now and how the program had been for so many years?’ The current kids are ready to fight. They’re ready to show for anybody, win or lose.

“… Our kids here in the inner-city, man, they’re just looking for high expectations. They’re not trying to be treated like victims. And so that’s my approach. I grew up in Compton (California) and then played at Delta (Colorado). I set high expectations for these kids in the classroom and on the field. And they’ve met the bar where I set it.”

The Cowboys don’t have a JV team, similar to many small-school football programs, and have just 26 players overall. That small number, which features 10 two-way starters, is because of the buy-in that Velasquez requires.

“Either you’re with it or you’re not, and that’s why our numbers are low,” Velasquez said. “I’ve coached on teams here at West where we’ve got 55 kids and we’ve won one game, but we have 26 kids who are three-sport athletes, 26 kids who’ve given us everything, year-round, don’t miss a day. I’d rather have that than 55 kids who are not committed.”

In the Gothic hallways of a school founded in 1883, Garcia and Velasquez have also dealt with constant change.

Denver West, like many Denver Public Schools, has experienced declining enrollment. What was once a Class 6A football school when Garcia attended West in the early ’90s has 512 students this year. That’s about a 33% drop from just seven years ago, according to Colorado Department of Education data.

The school’s also been through significant organizational changes over the past 15 years. In 2011, West High School was phased out, and the building housed West Generation Academy and West Leadership Academy, plus a middle school and an alternative school. West Generation Academy then became West Early College before West High School

Throughout those transitions, it became difficult for Garcia to cultivate a consistent talent pipeline and develop a better culture with his roster made up of students from various schools. When Garcia inherited a program with only 14 players in 2011, the Cowboys had gone winless in three of their prior five seasons, with just three total wins in that span.

And during Garcia’s 12 seasons, Denver West had five one-win seasons. If not for the Cowboys’ participation in the Broncos’ Futures program, a 7th/8th grade team that’s fed into the school since 2010, Denver West would’ve had to drop football.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Garcia said. “It was really hard. I think most of the time, it just broke my heart. I felt like everybody else had turned their backs on these kids and this community. And being one of those kids (as a Denver West alum), and understanding what those kids go home to or what they don’t go home to, I felt like I just couldn’t be another person that quit on them.

“It was discouraging at times as head coach, but I felt like I could never put my head down in front of them because I didn’t want them to put their heads down, either. So we just fought through it, and I tried to teach the kids about family even though we were still struggling with the commitment aspect.”

Early in Garcia’s tenure, the Cowboys would retrieve his baby son out of the car seat from his car so the tot could sit on the sidelines at practice. Now, that baby is sophomore Gio Garcia — Denver West’s starting center. Meanwhile, Leon Garcia’s longtime right-hand man, Velasquez, has found the right combination of discipline and structure to make the AD’s coaching journey at Denver West come full circle.

“Denver West has seen increased attendance from its players and increased GPAs with those higher academic standards that (Velasquez and Garcia) set,” said Denver Public Schools athletic director Kevin Bendjy. “The Futures football program has been key too.

“… It’s an amazing blueprint that they have executed. Their focus on relationships with their students and their enthusiasm and passion to support the community, support that school and to make it great is what I’m most proud of.”

has also provided stable leadership since the reunification of the school in ’21, and other athletic programs have risen under her watch. Denver West’s state championship history is slim: The Cowboys have only won four titles, the most recent being Class 5A boys cross country in 2003. But the school has become competitive again in a variety of sports.

This fall, the boys soccer team made the Class 3A playoffs following an 11-3-1 regular season. Both the boys and girls basketball teams made the playoffs last season. The track team has been on the rise for some time, with the boys earning state runner-up honors in 2019 with Velasquez as co-head coach. Another spring sport, girls golf, had 28 members last year.

“In girls golf, which is one of the larger golf teams in DPS, are we winning tons of tournaments? No, but we’re getting kids excited about playing for this school and just giving them an opportunity to see where they’re at,” Garcia said. “It’s a sign of the (revitalized culture) of West athletics as a whole, with kids wanting to come here and participate in whatever sports they do.”

As Denver West football enters the playoffs next week, the team has a chance to intensify that Cowboy pride. Historical records beyond the Maxpreps Era (since 2004) are hard to come by, but it’s believed that Denver West’s last playoff win in football came 91 years ago, in 1934.

Denver West was crushed in its . Velasquez said the 41-0 defeat to top-seeded Strasburg gave his players “culture shock” because of the program’s longstanding lack of postseason experience.

But the Cowboys feel they are better equipped to make noise this November. Denver West’s headliners include junior quarterback/linebacker Marcelo “Rocket” Ortiz, senior wideouts/safeties Robert Wittke and Ernest Fields, junior do-everything Jesus Acevedo and senior defensive end/tackle Aries Uong.

Uong, a team captain and four-year starter who also played on West’s Futures team, says the Cowboys are primed to take another significant step forward as a program. Denver West was , and could face No. 7 Resurrection Christian in the opening round of the 16-team playoffs.

The Cougars (6-3) have been a Class 2A power lately, reaching the postseason nine of the last 10 seasons. So Denver West will be an underdog, but the Cowboys are taking a “Why not us?” mentality into the game.

“Getting that playoff win, it would mean everything,” Uong said. “It would mean all the losses were worth it, all the struggles were worth it. All the sacrifices by the coaches were worth it. And most importantly, all our dedication to turn this program around was worth it. It already has been, but a playoff win, that would be (the exclamation point).”

Jeison Urbina-Mancia, 18, and Gerardo Martinez Navarette, 21, allegedly knew the victim, and Denver police wrote in that the shooting may have been related to a prior conflict.

The shooting in the 800 block of Elati Street put the school on a secure-perimeter status for about an hour Tuesday afternoon. Denver Public Schools spokesperson Scott Pribble later confirmed that the victim is an 18-year-old West High School senior, despite Denver police reporting initially that he was not a student.

Both suspects were detained at Denver’s downtown detention center as of Saturday afternoon, according to jail records.

Officers responded to a shooting in the 800 block of Elati Street at 2:42 p.m., according to the Denver Police Department. One man was taken to a hospital with wounds that were not life-threatening.

West High School was put on a secure-perimeter status after the shot was heard and remained that way for about an hour, said Denver Public Schools spokesperson Scott Pribble.

Pribble directed questions about student involvement to Denver police. Although police said at the time that the victim was not a student, Chalkbeat Colorado later reported

Anyone with information about the case can contact Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

Updated 3:25 p.m. March 8, 2025: This article has been updated to include information about the shooting victim’s enrollment at West High School.

Boys

1. Rangeview redux: The Raiders and head coach Shawn Palmer were two wins away from an unbeaten championship season in 2020 before COVID-19 cut things short. Now a new cast of characters, led by senior transfer LaDavian King (16.5 points), sophomore Archie Weatherspoon (13.6) and 6-foot-5 freshman Marceles Duncan (14.1), have Rangeview (16-0) more than halfway there. The Raiders have already beaten Fruita Monument, Kent Denver, Northfield, Denver South and Grandview, but a rough-and-tumble 6A City League offers no days off. Still, the opportunity to finish what Obi Agbim & Co. started five years ago is out there.

2. Braketa Family affair: These are heady days in Arvada, where the Mustangs are off to their best start in program history (15-0 going into Saturday) as they eye their first trip to Denver Coliseum in 17 years. The engine powering what’s arguably Chris Braketa’s best team in eight seasons as R.V. head coach: his sharpshooting sons Caiden and Tanner, who’d made a combined 90 3s entering Saturday’s game vs. Arvada West while averaging 35.0 points and 9.6 assists on 46.6% shooting from the field. Tanner, a Northern Colorado commit, is the lone senior among R.V.’s top six scorers, so the Mustangs might just be getting started in Class 6A.

3. Mr. 2000: Valor Christian senior Cole Scherer put on a show leading the Eagles to the 6A title inside Denver Coliseum last winter, and the encore has been even better. The 6-foot-2 Eastern Washington commit entered the weekend leading the state at 29.1 points per game — to go along with 6.9 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.4 blocks on 54% shooting. If Scherer keeps that scoring pace up, a run at 2,000 career points isn’t out of the question. Only 13 players have crossed that threshold in state history. Scherer needed 277 after 15 games to be the 14th. Doable — but only if he and the Eagles (12-4) can make it back to the Coliseum.

4. Mesa Ridge three-peat?: A Grizzlies program that hadn’t won a single state title before 2023 is now chasing a 5A three-peat at No. 2 in the CHSAA RPI. Senior guard Bryce Riehl (18.2 points, 4.5 steals, 2.3 assists) is as productive as ever, even with his brother Tevin off to college, and the Grizzlies have won 14 straight since opening the season with a loss at Liberty. A one-point win over Lewis-Palmer, which just knocked off 5A contenders Lutheran (14-3) and Discovery Canyon (13-4) back-to-back, is getting better with age. But 5A remains wide open.

5. Denver’s best hope: Could it be … Denver West? The Cowboys haven’t reached the championship round since 1950 and have three winning seasons in 20 years, but they’re 14-1 with a solid six-man rotation led by 6-foot-4 senior Jeremiah Parker, who averages a double-double at 18.2 points and 11.7 rebounds per game. Kent Denver is No. 1 in the 4A CHSAA RPI, with West at No. 6 — the highest of any DPS boys program. Next week’s back-to-back vs. DSST: Conservatory Green (10-5) and DSST: Green Valley Ranch (10-5) should indicate whether these Cowboys are for real.

Girls

1. All-Americans: Grandview’s Sienna Betts and Peak to Peak’s Alexandra Eschmeyer became the 11th and 12th Colorado girls to be named McDonald’s All-Americans this week. But the seniors have another thing in common: They both have a shot at joining the exclusive 2,000/1,000 club. Only 11 girls have scored 2,000 points in state history, and just two of those girls — Grandview’s Michaela Onyenwere (2013-17) and Fowler’s Cari Jensen (1996-2000) — also grabbed 1,000 rebounds. Betts (1,314) and Eschmeyer (1,069) already have the boards. The hard part is crossing 2,000 points. Betts was the closest entering the weekend at 1,758, with Eschmeyer at 1,726. Both need long playoff runs. With Betts’ Wolves the top-ranked team in the 6A CHSAA RPI, the UCLA commit likely has the best shot.

2. Filling it up: Riverdale Ridge junior Brihanna Crittendon’s assault on the CHSAA record books has continued even after the Ravens jumped from 4A to 6A. The 6-foot-3 forward passed the 2,000-point mark last week and is averaging 26.8 points per game, keeping her on pace to chase Tracy Hill’s 42-year-old scoring record (2,934) next winter. Last year’s 4A champions are hanging tough at the 6A level, posting an 11-5 record that includes losses to Grandview (62-53), Legend (64-58) and Cherry Creek (68-65). Crittendon’s biggest hurdle might be getting enough games to get there.

3. Going for two: Valor Christian may be No. 2 in the 6A CHSAA RPI, but the defending champs have every reason to believe they’re still the best team in the state. The Eagles (14-2) have beaten six of the top 10 teams in the 6A RPI, including No. 1 Grandview and No. 5 Broomfield, and haven’t lost to a Colorado team in nearly a full calendar year. Forward Peyton Jones has made “the leap” as a junior, putting up averages of 25.3 points and 3.9 steals on 55% shooting, and Pepperdine commit Quinn VanSickle is as dangerous as ever. A third state title in five years is in play.

4. Rare Air: The last two Air Academy seasons ended in similarly heartbreaking fashion with the Kadets squandering double-digit leads in the Coliseum — including last year’s Final Four loss to Northfield. But Kansas commit Tatyonna Brown (19.7 points, 8.2 rebounds) and junior Kinley Asp (13.2 points, 3.8 assists) have Air Academy 17-0 and No. 1 in the 5A CHSAA RPI, including a win over 6A power Pine Creek. Is this the year the Kadets end two-time defending champion Roosevelt’s run of dominance? Is Mullen, which dropped down to 5A, or Mead lurking?

5. D’Evelyn undaunted: Talented seniors Peyton Marvel and Macy Scheer graduated last spring, yet Chris Olson’s girls basketball machine continues to churn on. The Jaguars entered the weekend 16-0 and No. 2 behind fellow unbeaten University in the 4A CHSAA RPI. D’Evelyn has fallen a game short of a 4A championship each of the last two winters, including an undefeated run to the 2023 final that ended in heartbreak vs. Holy Family. Can this group, led by super sophomore Colleen Monahan (16.3 ppg), finish the job? Don’t be surprised if the Jags are in the mix — again.

Marrero presented his consolidation plan, which would permanently close or restructure grade levels at 10 schools at the end of this academic year, to Denver Public Schools’ Board of Education during its meeting Thursday evening.

“This is also a difficult time for us,” board President Carrie Olson said during the meeting. “None of us want to close schools.”

READ MORE: Denver Public Schools sets public meetings at each of 10 schools up for closure or restructuring

The school board will vote whether to close seven schools on Nov. 21; Marrero doesn’t need the board’s approval to restructure the other three schools.

The superintendent packaged the consolidation as a larger part of DPS’s efforts to respond to falling enrollment and prevent what he has called a “a full-blown crisis.” The district is losing tens of millions of dollars a year in state funding as fewer children enroll in Denver schools.

The criteria Marrero used to make his recommendation to the board included whether schools had buildings that were using 65% or less of their capacity and had enrollment levels believed to be sustainable, and whether a majority of families living in a school’s boundaries were choosing to send their children to that school, according to the superintendent’s presentation to the board.

Marrero’s plan relies heavily on using new or expanded or boundaries that include multiple schools families can choose from rather than a single neighborhood school.

Here’s why DPS recommends  closing or restructuring each of the 10 schools on Marrero’s list:

Castro Elementary

DPS officials proposed closing , 845 S. Lowell Blvd., because the school is only using about 39% of its building capacity and has low enrollment, with 237 students. Many families — 41 students total — living in Castro’s boundary send their children to other schools in the district. By comparison, only nine students “choice in,” meaning their parents decided to send them to Castro despite not living in the school’s boundary.

If Castro closes, its students will have a seat at either or

Castro has a — Transitional Native Language Instruction — program for Spanish-speaking students. Knapp is also part of the TNLI program and CMS Community is a dual-language school, according to the district’s presentation.

Columbian Elementary

Marrero has recommended at 2925 W. 40th St., close because the school is only using about 38% of its building capacity. The school, which has 143 total pupils, only has 20 kindergarteners enrolled, which DPS says is not a full class size.

More families living in Columbian’s boundary choose for their children to attend school elsewhere in the district compared to the number of families that “choice in.”

If Columbian closes, then students will be guaranteed a seat and transportation to a school in a new enrollment zone that DPS would create in northwest Denver. The other schools included in the new zone are , , and .

Columbian’s special education program would move to Trevista.

Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design

The a high school, at 840 E. 14th Ave., would close under Marrero’s plan because it only enrolls 60 students, including just 13 in ninth grade.

DPS said that not only is 60 students “not sustainable,” but high school enrollment in the area is expected to decline further. The Denver School of Innovation is also only using about 16% of its building capacity, which is the lowest building utilization rate among the district’s high schools, according to the presentation.

The Denver School of Innovation does not have a boundary, meaning all students who attend the school chose go there. For this reason, if the school closes, students are guaranteed a seat at their neighborhood school or a one of several schools if they live in an enrollment zone.

International Academy of Denver at Harrington

Marrero recommended closing , at 2401 E. 37th Ave. The elementary school has 122 total students, but only 18 kindergarteners. DPS officials said the latter figure is not enough for a full kindergarten class.

The school is also only using 22% of its building capacity.

Like others on the list, IAD at Harrington has more families living in the school boundary that are choosing other schools for their children then families coming in.

If IAD at Harrington closes, students would have an guaranteed seat and transportation to a school in the Under the plan, the enrollment zone would also be expanded to include , , , , and

IAD at Harrington’s special education program would move to Garden Place Academy. Spanish speaking students who receive TINLI services could still receive bilingual programming at several schools in the zone, including Cole, Garden Place and Swansea.

Palmer Elementary

, at 995 Grape St., has been recommended for closure; it enrolls 150 students, including 31 kindergarteners.

Palmer is using 43% of the school’s building capacity and 61 of the students living in its boundary attend school elsewhere, according to the district.  By comparison, only 12 students attend Palmer despite living outside of the school’s boundary.

If Palmer closes, DPS would create a new enrollment zone called Central East Elementary School Zone. Palmer students would be guaranteed a seat and transportation to , , , , or

Schmitt Elementary

DPS officials proposed closing , at 1820 S. Vallejo St. The school enrolls 127 pupils, including 21 kindergarteners. DPS said that with 21 kindergarteners, Schmitt doesn’t have enough for a full class.

The school is also only using 33% of its building capacity and 42 children who live in the Schmitt’s boundary attend school elsewhere.

If Schmitt closes, DPS would create a new enrollment zone called the Southwest Central Elementary Zone. Schmitt students would be guaranteed a seat and transportation to any school in the zone, which will include , and .

West Middle School

Marrero recommended at 951 Elati St., close because it enrolls 186 and is using 60% of its building capacity.

The superintendent proposed closing West Middle because it’s located about half a mile from DCIS Baker 6-12, another school on the list that would be restructured into middle school under the plan. As enrollment is declining, DPS officials said there only needs to be one middle school and one high school — West High School — in the area, according to the district’s presentation.

If West Middle closes, students will be guaranteed a seat and transportation to a school in the , which DCIS Baker would join. Other schools in the zone include , , , and

Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy is also in the zone, but Marrero has proposed restructuring that school so it serves fewer grades.

West Middle students who receive TNLI services will be able to access similar bilingual services at other schools in the zone, including DCIS Baker, according to the presentation.

DCIS Baker 6-12

The superintendent recommended 574 W. Sixth Ave., become a middle school and no longer teach high-schoolers.

DCIS Baker enrolls 144 middle schoolers and 210 high schoolers, and its building capacity is at 42%.

The district wants to restructure DCIS Baker because it is close to both West Middle and West High. With enrollment falling, including among secondary students, DPS feels it makes sense to only have one middle school and one high school in the area, according to the presentation.

Under the superintendent’s plan, the school would join the West Middle School Enrollment Zone, meaning DCIS Baker could absorb students from West Middle if that school permanently closes.

Students affected by the restructuring would have a seat at , if they live in the school’s boundary. (DCIS Baker is a “choice only” school, meaning it doesn’t have a neighborhood boundary itself and its students have all chosen to go there.)

DCIS’s programming for high-schoolers would move to West High as would a special education program.

Dora Moore ECE-8 School

Under the district’s plan, , at 846 Corona St, would no longer teach middle schoolers and just become an elementary school.

Dora Moore, a “choice only” school, enrolls 314 total students, but only 62 of the pupils are middle schoolers. The school is also only using 59% of its building capacity.

Marrero is proposing to make Dora Moore an ECE-5 school because middle school enrollment is falling in the area and is expected to keep falling. There’s also another school — — less than a mile away, according to the presentation.

Dora Moore students affected by the changes will be guaranteed a seat at their neighborhood school or at multiple schools if they live in an enrollment zone. Dora Moore is located in Morey’s boundary, meaning students would have a seat at that school, according to the presentation.

Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy

Marrero recommended eliminating elementary grades at and have the school just serve grades 6 to 12. Kunsmiller, at 2250 S Quitman St., enrolls 128 students and uses 39% of the school’s building capacity.

DPS wants to restructure Kunsmiller, another “choice only” school, because elementary school enrollment is declining and the school didn’t have a kindergarten class this academic year, according to the presentation.

Students affected by the restructuring would be guaranteed a seat at their neighborhood school or one in an enrollment zone that they live in.

Denver Public Schools’ Board of Education voted unanimously less than a week later, on June 11 to phase out school resource officers, or SROs — one of dozens of school districts in the United States to do so amid the national reckoning that followed the murder of Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

The board’s vote was one of the most high-profile outcomes in Denver of that summer’s push for racial justice, and it followed more than a decade of work by community organizers — namely the advocacy group Movimiento Poder — to end the over-policing of students of color in DPS buildings.

But now, three years later, the school board is on the verge of reversing that policy — a move board members say is being spurred not just by the March 22 shooting inside East High School, but by rising gun violence among Denver teens and the increasing number of firearms being discovered inside district buildings.

Divisions have erupted on the board as members disagree on whether to put police back into schools long-term. But board President Xochitl “Sochi” Gaytán called their return “inevitable.”

“The landscape of policing is shifting from the conversations that the Denver community was having in 2020,” she said. “The access to guns and weapons is outrageous, in my humble opinion, especially the access to guns among our young people.”

Board members temporarily allowed armed police to return to Denver high schools after the East shooting by suspending the 2020 policy prohibiting SROs. And they now are weighing two plans to change the policy, which is set to resume in just under three weeks unless the board takes action.

Among the proposals: a plan that would allow Superintendent Alex Marrero to station officers on campuses and another that would create what board members are calling community resource officers, who would be placed in regions across the district, but not inside schools.

The board is expected to discuss those proposals Thursday and could vote by the end of the month. Marrero also is expected to release the final version of his new districtwide safety plan by the end of June.

The crux of the issue is how DPS should respond to growing youth gun violence in Denver and whether having police on campus would have prevented two high-profile shootings at East, the city’s largest high school, earlier this year.

The Denver Post interviewed four members about how the school board has reached the point where some directors are reconsidering their stance on SROs. Two directors — Michelle Quattlebaum and Carrie Olson — declined to comment. Another board member, Scott Esserman, did not respond to a request for comment.

Marrero declined an interview request, with a district spokesman saying that the superintendent is not speaking about his safety plan until after the final version is released later this month.

“The challenge of getting a consensus by the board appears to me as one of the more intense that I’ve seen,” said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, adding, “This one certainly has been fought out in public.”

At a school board meeting last week, Gaytán — Quattlebaum and Auon’tai Anderson — as they pushed back on statements made by Marrero and Denver police Chief Ron Thomas that supported the return of SROs.

“If it took 10 years of research to remove SROs from schools, why does it only take three months to discount that work?” Quattlebaum asked Thomas during the Monday meeting, which was held exactly three years after the 2020 news conference calling for the removal of police from Denver schools.

Rising youth gun violence

The first significant calls to reinstate SROs came from parents and students came after a Feb. 13 shooting outside of East.

Luis Garcia, a junior, was sitting in his car outside of the high school when he was shot in the head. The 16-year-old died at Denver Health Medical Center more than two weeks later.

At the time, East parents and students called for tighter security on campus and teens spoke out about not feeling safe. Students also began protesting, walking out school to urge Colorado lawmakers to take action on gun control.

In response to the February shooting, Marrero and school board members stressed that the incident had not occurred on campus, but rather, near the school.

The shooting, they said, was part of a broader trend of rising gun violence among teens in Denver and they urged city officials to address gun violence in the community and to prioritize safety around schools.

“My call to action is to prevent it from getting into our schools,” Marrero told The Post in February.

Last year, 17 teenagers were killed in Denver — nearly double the number who died five years ago. Another 70 teens were injured in shootings. Most of those killed or injured were shot by other teens, according to Denver Police Department data.

Youth gun violence is on the rise for multiple reasons, including easy access to firearms, children not feeling safe and the mental health toll of the coronavirus pandemic, said Franci Crepeau-Hobson, professor of school psychology at the University of Colorado Denver.

And what’s happening on Denver’s streets is seeping into the city’s schools. The number of firearms found on DPS campuses began increasing during the 2019-20 academic year and has remained steady in the years since despite the pandemic.

The district found 15 firearms during the 2019-20 school year, which was an increase from two guns the year before. There were 16 guns discovered in Denver schools during the 2022-23 academic year, according to the latest data provided by the district.

While the number of actual firearms has remained steady, the district has seen a larger increase in fake guns appearing on campuses. DPS found 42 facsimile firearms last school year, a 50% increase from the 28 found the year before, according to the data.

“You have kids who make bad decisions and are sitting in a classroom with loaded guns,” DPS board member Charmaine Lindsay said.

Lindsay, who was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board in 2022, said she had not supported the decision to remove SROs three years ago. The board, she said, should have moved sooner to reinstate them.

Earlier this year, the school board acknowledged the rise in gun violence and adopted a policy that said the district would collaborate with local law enforcement and community organizations to “mitigate” threats.

“We were proactively doing the right thing and focusing on the right thing,” board member Scott Baldermann said.

But, he said, the policy, which was made under the board’s new governing model, was a long-term solution, one that the district would undertake over multiple years.

Then, less than a month after Garcia was shot, another shooting occurred at East — this time inside the high school.

“Too many incidents were happening”

An East student shot and injured two administrators while undergoing a daily search for weapons on March 22. The 17-year-old student fled the school and died by suicide later that day.

That same day, Marrero sent board members a letter saying that he planned to place armed officers in the district����ap comprehensive high schools even though doing so “likely violates” the board’s 2020 policy prohibiting SROs.

“However, I can no longer stand on the sidelines,” Marrero wrote in the letter. “I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions.”

A day later, the board met behind closed doors for five hours. When the members emerged, they voted unanimously to temporarily suspend the policy barring SROs and directed Marrero to craft a districtwide safety plan.

After the second East shooting, the calls for police in schools grew as parents and others in the community criticized DPS for what they called the district����ap lack of response to school safety. Much of the scrutiny has focused on the district����ap discipline policies and the decision to remove SROs.

It became a topic during mayoral debates. Garcia’s family has said it intends to sue DPS and has accused district and city leaders of negligence because they removed armed police from schools. And a group made up of parents and other community members coalesced, calling for school board members to resign.

The Resign DPS Board movement has accumulated about 5,000 signatures of support and stems from the perspective of concerned parents, said Heather Lamm, who is spearheading the group. She is the daughter of late Gov. Dick Lamm and a former spokeswoman for the DSST charter school network.

Lamm, who graduated from DPS and now has two kids in the district and one who just graduated from East, said she and other parents are disenchanted with the school board’s lack of action following a spate of violence and school safety issues.

She said the group is not for or against SRO’s and that members have mixed feelings about police in schools.

“We started feeling very, very frustrated at what we perceive to be a really dysfunctional board that should not be in charge of making life or death decisions with kids’ safety,” she said.

Board members, including Baldermann and Anderson, said the March shooting was the catalyst for the board to revisit its stance on SROs. If it hadn’t happened, they said, it’s unlikely the board would consider reversing the 2020 prohibition.

“If East never would have happened, this board never would have taken up the conversation,” Anderson said.

The shooting made board members realize they needed to respond more quickly to gun violence than the safety policy passed earlier this year would allow them to do, Baldermann said.

“Too many incidents were happening in short windows of time,” he said.

Anderson said he has heard board colleagues say that they need to act because “people have to see something.”

“The board cares,” he added. “I believe my colleagues and I care about people, but I do believe that we are misguided in this conversation that we are having.”

Instead, Anderson said, the board needs to focus on the root causes of gun violence and prioritize mental health resources in the district����ap budget.

Both Baldermann and Anderson were on the board in 2020 when it decided to phase out SROs. Now they find themselves on opposite ends of the SRO debate.

Anderson wants to keep the SRO policy in place, but make a tweak to add community resource officers who can respond when needed but not be stationed inside schools. He called the plan a middle ground.

But Baldermann has proposed a larger overhaul of the 2020 policy, which would give the district’s superintendent the flexibility to station SROs in schools. It would also place limits on what SROs could not do, such as disciplining students.

The board’s decision three years ago “was the right one at the time,” Baldermann said. But, he said, “a lot has changed.”

District leadership has changed both on the board and in the superintendent’s office. The board has a new governance model that it uses to give the superintendent guidance rather than directives like the 2020 ban on SROs.

But, mostly, the number of weapons being found on campuses has been “eye-opening,” Baldermann said, adding that he thinks police in schools will deter students from bringing guns to campus.

“We’re talking about policing Black children”

Other school board members, including Anderson, have argued that officers would not have prevented the shootings at East.

He and Quattlebaum have said having police in schools harms students of color and contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline because Black and Latino pupils historically have been arrested and ticketed at a disproportionately high rate compared to their white peers.

“We’re talking about policing Black children,” Quattlebaum told her colleagues during a June 1 board meeting. “That is what we are talking about without saying it. How do we make sure that white students are safe when they are in school with Black students?

“That����ap really the conversation that we are having, but we are trying not to have,” she said.

Research is not clear on whether SROs prevent shootings, but it does show that students of color are more likely to be punished with expulsions and arrests.

Most studies haven’t done a good job at separating designated SROs from other school security or regular police officers, who don’t have the same training but might still appear in a school setting, said Crepeau-Hobson, the professor at CU Denver.

It����ap difficult to say whether SROs would have prevented a shooting because there’s no way to prove something that didn’t happen, she said.

What research does show is that there is an association between schools having police officers on campus and disproportionate rates of harsh discipline among students of color, Crepeau-Hobson said.

Studies also have shown that SROs do make a difference in some areas of safety.  found that SROs reduced violence, such as fights, but did not prevent gun-related incidents. At the same time, the study’s findings suggested that having an SRO did increase the number of reported firearm offenses, which researchers noted are rare.

The same study also found that “SROs intensify the use of suspension, expulsion, police referral and arrest of students” and that those actions mostly affect Black students, boys and students with disabilities.

Movimiento Poder has worked for more than a decade to decrease expulsions, suspensions, ticketing and arrests of students by changing DPS’s discipline policy and other efforts, said Jim Freeman, who leads the Social Movement Support Lab and consultant for the organization.

The district����ap decision to remove SROs “didn’t come out of nowhere,” he said. “This wasn’t a knee-jerk response to what was happening in Minneapolis.”

At DPS, the number of tickets and arrests of students has been declining for almost a decade, including after the district voted to remove SROs in 2020, according to last month.

During the 2021-22 academic year, there were 151 tickets and arrests of DPS students. That����ap almost an 80% decrease from the 744 tickets and arrests recorded in 2018-19, according to the report. (Part of the period examined in the report occurred during the pandemic, when students were in remote learning.)

“We know for a fact, based on community and historical insight, that this was a huge issue — that our students were being sent to the school-to-prison pipeline and the deportation pipeline,” said Elizabeth Burciaga, a lead organizer with Movimiento Poder.

The school-to-prison pipeline occurs when as a result of policies that use law enforcement to address behavioral issues and discipline.

Board members who are supportive of putting police back into schools agreed that students of color have historically been disciplined at higher rates. But they said they are trusting Marrero and Chief Thomas — both of whom came into their jobs in the past two years — to ensure the inequities don’t return with the officers.

“We should put some guidelines around what we don’t want to see,” Lindsay said. “We don’t want to criminalize high school behavior.”

Reversing policy

DPS is not alone in reconsidering its prohibition on SROs. At least 50 U.S. school districts either ended their police programs or cut their budgets between May 2020 and June 2022. Of the districts that removed police, at least eight have since reversed course,

Districts that are bringing SROs back or are in conversations to do so include those in Alexandria, Virginia, and Fremont, California, said Mo Canady, a former police lieutenant and SRO in Alabama who now serves as executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

“We’ve seen some districts reverse their decision on the SRO issue because they started experiencing unusual levels of violence when school starts back,” he said, acknowledging that the pandemic was hard on many students and impacted their mental health and behavior.

Canady’s organization has

Among them, Canady said there needs to be a memorandum of understanding between school districts and law enforcement agencies about what SROs will and won’t do. For example, the agreements need to prohibit SRO involvement in classroom management or behavior issues that educators and administrators can handle.

There needs to be rigorous, evolving and continued training on topics like adolescent mental health, implicit bias, behavioral threat assessment and ways to reduce school-based arrest, Canady said.

Officers must focus on relationship-building with students, Canady said, and the officers must be carefully selected.

Denver’s police department prefers to have full-time SROs in all of the city’s comprehensive high schools, Thomas, the police chief, told the school board during Monday’s meeting.

SROs would be from the school community, he said, and the department would review and share data on SROs’ contacts with students, use alternatives to citations and have “absolutely no engagement” in school discipline matters.

Marrero told the board that both he and Thomas “are committed to not going backwards.”

“We must continue to decrease the over-policing of our students, particularly those students of color,” the superintendent said.

But not all board members are convinced.

“I can’t just go off on a leap of hope and say I’m trusting our superintendent to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline with police,” Anderson said, adding, “I don’t believe that we can turn back the clock now. We don’t have enough data to say this failed.”

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“We really understood the weight of what that meant,” said Uriarte, now a 24-year-old Metropolitan State University of Denver graduate. “We were so young and we already knew the importance of this decision.”

Uriarte grew up in Denver’s Westwood, a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood. Born in Mexico and with a father who joined the workforce before completing school, education meant everything to Uriarte and her parents, who came to this country illegally in search of a greater life for their children.

A better middle school meant more intensive classes and a shot at a better high school — a chance for Uriarte to be the first in her family to go to college, earn a degree and know a life different from her parents’ struggles.

Luck was on Uriarte’s side in 2010 when she entered the Denver Public Schools enrollment lottery and nabbed a spot at the middle school she and her family hoped would put her on a path toward success: Denver West Middle School, known at the time for its rigorous focus on getting students to college, she said.

But Uriarte’s future once again hinges on circumstances outside of her control. She’s a beneficiary of the legal protections provided under the federal government’s , or DACA, program — the future of which is in doubt as courts weigh its legality.

She wonders whether she’ll be able to pursue the life she and her family worked and sacrificed for or be deported back to a country she only knew as a baby.

Called to the field that guided Uriarte on her path to success, the December graduate hopes to put her elementary education degree with a concentration in culturally and linguistically diverse studies to good use in Colorado, but DACA’s ultimate fate could put her future as a teacher in jeopardy.

“It’s degrading,” Uriarte said. “Some people think it’s just on a whim that people have chosen to leave their home country and come here instead. But to make such a big decision, it’s never for no reason. It makes me angry because I think about everything my parents have done for me and everything I have done. Why can’t I be able to fully enjoy everything that we’ve worked for?”

Future of DACA unclear

DACA, a program established by the Obama administration in 2012, provides two years of renewable protection from deportation and work permits to undocumented people who were brought to the United States illegally as children.

To be eligible for DACA, applicants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, lived in the U.S. continuously since June 2007, be free of any felony convictions or significant misdemeanor offenses, and pose no threat to national security or public safety, among other requirements.

In 2017, President Donald Trump announced he would rescind DACA, instigating a series of court cases to determine the program’s legality that remain ongoing and serve as a constant reminder to hundreds of thousands of people that their lives are being built on a precarious foundation.

In October, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled DACA unlawful. Existing DACA recipients can still renew their applications, but , said Violeta Chapin, a clinical law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

More than 13,000 Coloradans are DACA recipients, according to 2022 data provided by the . About 8,000 more people in Colorado are estimated to be eligible for DACA but are blocked from newly applying.

Almost 600,000 DACA recipients nationwide have been left stranded in this ongoing limbo.

“It’s just sort of churning around,” Chapin said of DACA’s status. “Eventually, it will get to the Supreme Court, but right now it’s in a holding pattern.”

Chapin described the odds of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority siding with DACA recipients as “miraculous.”

A different kind of learning loss

When Uriarte’s name was drawn for Denver West Middle School, she said a weight lifted that she hadn’t realized her child self was carrying. The door to a path toward opportunity had been opened, and Uriarte sprinted through.

Even so, Denver West Middle School was intense for Uriarte, who learned English while attending elementary school.

Uriarte’s experience as a Latina student inspired her to become a teacher so she could be a resource she never had — someone who understood the double-edged sword of assimilating into an American school.

“The loss that a lot of students like me experienced growing up makes me want to make sure students can continue to nurture that part of them,” Uriarte said. “That was one of the most heartbreaking things for my parents. The more we went to school, the quicker we were losing the parts of ourselves we didn’t want to see gone — the language, for example.”

Each classroom at Denver West was named after a university, Uriarte said, and the prospect of college was drilled into students. Teachers were caring but academically strict, she said. The workload, she said, was heavy and, at times, overwhelming.

“I did get pretty stressed out, but once I started taking college classes, I realized that everything I had done, going back to middle school, really did prepare me for what I was getting myself into because I was already so accustomed to not taking any shortcuts,” Uriarte said.

By the time Uriarte got to West High School, the gravity of her situation as an undocumented student started weighing heavy. She was accepted into the DACA program in 2016, but there was an unspoken understanding among students not to discuss their legal status for fear of what might happen to their families.

One day, the high school organized a trip to the University of Denver for undocumented students, Uriarte said, to inform them about their college options and avenues to receive monetary assistance since they do not qualify for federal financial aid.

When the students assembled for the trip, Uriarte was shocked to find many of her friends among the group — a secret they all had been keeping from each other and were relieved to finally share.

“It was a very comforting moment to know I wasn’t alone in this,” she said.

Helping undocumented students succeed

Uriarte didn’t know how she was going to pay for college but worked hard enough to earn the selective

Additionally, Uriarte received help from the and the  state program, which allows eligible undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at Colorado’s public colleges and universities and receive need-based state financial aid.

Gregor Mieder, director of , said MSU Denver serves the largest population of undocumented students of any Colorado higher education institution.

“I’ve been working with immigrant youth and families for many years and their dedication to education and to being part of the Colorado labor force blows me away every time,” Mieder said. “These are individuals who are eager to fill the kinds of jobs where we see a huge need in the state of Colorado — like social workers, teachers, nursing, accountants. Those are jobs where we have problems finding folks, and not just a few folks, but thousands and thousands of positions that are open. It����ap the immigrant communities that are stepping in and want to fill those positions, and that’s important for our state.”

Mieder’s office helps undocumented students along with refugees and students from abroad learn about financial aid options available to them, provides writing and language support, offers students grants to pay for their DACA renewals, and even connects them with immigration attorneys when needed.

“We have really, fortunately, over the last few years come a long way in Colorado to make college and career more accessible for undocumented people, but a lot of that can be pretty specialized knowledge,” Mieder said.

Many local high schools have counselors or staff knowledgeable in helping undocumented students access college, but if a student or family is interested in learning more, Mieder said reaching out to specific higher education institutions like MSU Denver will provide undocumented people with the answers they’re seeking.

“It’s so mind-blowing”

Uriarte passed her prerequisite classes at the Community College of Denver and transferred to MSU Denver to pursue her elementary education degree.

In the spring, Uriarte began her year-long teaching residency at Northeast Elementary School in Brighton, which she just wrapped.

She hopes to teach either first, second or third grade in Colorado, and she wants to land at a school where she can make the most difference.

“Upcoming teachers know where we’re needed most is where there’s the most trauma and the most diversity and lack of resources, and where I grew up was a Title I (high-poverty) school and where I did my residency was a Title I school, and I can’t imagine another way for me to give back to everything I’ve gotten,” Uriarte said.

Looking back, Uriarte is proud of everything she and her family have overcome. Her parents have since attained their residency status, and her mother earned a GED.

“Being reflective, thinking about where we were back then and where we are now, it����ap so mind-blowing,” Uriarte said. “There’s a lot of joy in seeing where everything started and how everything panned out.”

The new graduate hopes the joy and luck that have graced her life in the past continue so she may work toward her future in the only country she remembers.

But that will depend on the future of DACA. The bipartisan legislative support for the program that once existed is dwindling, said Chapin, the CU Boulder law professor.

“It’s an abject failure of our congressional members to agree, and it leaves those who are impacted by it with a tremendous amount of anxiety and anger and an increasing sense of not feeling welcome in a country that they love,” Chapin said. “It is our fault — the U.S. system and people who can vote — that we have been unable to pass laws that would normalize and change the status of not just DACA recipients but their parents, many of whom have lived here for decades and the vast majority are contributing members of society.”

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Many students and teachers already are back in classrooms, and more are gradually returning each week as the state pushes districts to offer in-person learning.

Educators, who likely won’t start receiving vaccinations until March, worry about catching the deadly disease. Many parents, excited that their children will be able to see their teachers and friends face-to-face, are nervous classes could move online again if COVID-19 conditions change.

With few significant changes to day-to-day procedures, educators and parents alike are bracing for a spring semester that resembles fall — one marked by frequent disruptions, long hours retooling lesson plans, and constantly shifting indications on whether or not it����ap safe to reopen schools.

But over the course of nearly a dozen recent interviews with families and educators, a new sentiment emerged that wasn’t present prior to the start of the school year: hopefulness. After navigating the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges, both teachers and parents said they are prepared to expect the unexpected, though they hope this semester won’t be as unpredictable as the last.

“We can choose to roll with the punches and do the best we can, or not,” said Annette Green, a special education teacher at Aurora West College Preparatory Academy. “I choose to see the optimism and the best in what we’re doing.”

“Fall was the trial run,” said Katie Winner, parent to two Jeffco Public Schools students. While she doesn’t expect the experience to be much different in the spring, how parents react will be, she said.

“For some that might involve a $5,000-a-semester learning pod with private tutors, and for some that might mean home schooling on their own or dropping out,” she said. “There’s a broad spectrum of options parents might choose to employ including staying with Jeffco and current structure.”

Operational obstacles persist

That����ap not to say this semester won’t have its challenges. Logistically, schools still have to adapt when students and teachers are quarantined due to COVID-19 exposure. According to school leaders, the biggest hindrance to hosting in-person classes last fall was filling staffing gaps when teachers were in quarantine. And because Colorado faces a shortage of substitutes and other critical positions, even supplemental federal funding may not translate into additional, necessary hires.

Last month, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment updated its quarantine protocols in hopes of preventing these staffing issues. Now, when a case of COVID-19 is detected, schools have the option to use what health officials call “targeted contact identification,” which allows them to send home only those who were within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more instead of a whole cohort of students. In order to use the targeted approach, schools must track illness-related absences, enforce mask wearing at all times except meals and implement class seating charts, .

Still, within the first weeks of Denver-area students returning to school, hundreds have been quarantined. In the Cherry Creek School District, are currently in quarantine, as are , according to the districts’ coronavirus dashboards.

Gov. Jared Polis has promised educators, students and their families access to more than 1 million rapid COVID-19 tests monthly to not only conduct surveillance testing and find cases before they reach schools, but also to potentially shorten quarantine stays. A negative test result can enable adults and kids to return to school in less than two weeks, .

While that encourages Littleton High School teacher Will Daniel, it does little to calm his anxiety about returning for face-to-face instruction. His district offers free COVID-19 testing, which Daniel has undergone every two weeks since August. That offers peace of mind, he said, but only for so long.

Last fall, Daniel was asked to leave school midday and quarantined after a positive case showed up in his cohort. He said that unless a teacher is symptomatic, the expectation is they will instruct class from afar while they wait out the isolation period. The whiplash of moving from in-person to virtual learning is hard on both students and teachers, not to mention more work. The thought of preparing two weeks worth of lesson plans for a sub to fill in is also “terrifying,” Daniel said.

“My gut is that we will probably be bouncing forth more than we were in the fall,” he said. “You can’t help but worry when there are (students) being told to stay home and we haven’t even put them back into school.”

Rachel Adler, a teacher at Swigert International School in Denver, agrees. Her fifth-graders began attending in-person classes Jan. 11, and she is equally as excited to see them as she is nervous about the virus. Adler expects more consistency in how kids learn this semester, which is a good thing — as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of her or her students’ health.

“Seems we’re in it for the long haul,” she said, “for better and worse.“

Any face time is a good thing

Last semester’s experience with remote learning has mom Tracy Paskoff on edge. Though she originally enrolled her first-grader Hayes in Jeffco Public Schools’ virtual program because of the health risks, it proved to be “an unmitigated disaster.” Hayes suffered emotionally, breaking down when he didn’t want to do an assignment or if he made a mistake.

After Paskoff was able to transfer her son to in-person learning, Hayes’ demeanor changed. He was happier, more engaged, and when he had unfinished work, he was able to sit with his teacher to get assistance. Those weeks of face-to-face instruction in the fall made all the difference when Jeffco went remote after Thanksgiving.

“The fact he was in the classroom with his teacher and with these kids before remote learning started, I think he was more into the community of it,” Paskoff said. “That helped a lot with feeling obligated to do the work.”

Educators like Amanda Cameron, a Spanish teacher at Arvada’s Ralston Valley High School, are making the most of their face time with students, given it����ap unclear how long it may last. Though managing a hybrid schedule is difficult, it����ap easier to keep in touch with students when they’re in the building part-time, she said. Cameron is also infusing as much fun into her classes as she can to keep them engaged no matter the learning format.

“Relationship building is at the core of any kind of success,” she said. “So I’ve been trying to work as hard as I can to get students to build relationships with each other, so they’re comfortable with each other and they can take advantage of that small window of time they do have in person to make connections and get stimulation of being around other humans.”

Many parents on social media expressed how reopening schools this semester has improved their children’s moods, even in just the first few weeks. Sumeet Garg is among those who have noticed a marked change in his sons, who attend Denver Public Schools. Last semester, his third-grader struggled with motivation to do coursework, while his sixth-grader felt isolated from his friends.

Now when they come home it����ap with big smiles and excitement to talk about their day.

“We send them to school with a mask and they’ve reported that kids are wearing masks in their classes… I’ve felt very safe with protocols at schools to keep the kids protected,” Garg said. “I’m optimistic that they will be able to continue an in-person option through the end of the school year.”

Trying to account for the unknowns

When it comes to how the pandemic will play out this spring, many unknowns remain. A new, more contagious COVID-19 variant was discovered in Colorado in December, though so far it hasn’t seemed to have influenced how schools operate. To date, 10 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant have been confirmed in the state.

That weighs heavily on Jennifer Smith-Daigle, who has three teenage sons who attend Cherokee Trail High School in the Cherry Creek School District. The boys would have liked to enroll virtually, but some of their essential classes, such as advanced placement courses, were not offered online. That Smith-Daigle feels the district has moved away from solid metrics to dictate a learning format has only increased her concerns about school safety.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention published reports that when mask-wearing, social-distancing and other safety protocols are in place. Special education teacher Green said administrators are militantly enforcing these rules at her school. Because of that, she feels safe in the building where she sees a small group of students in-person five days a week.

Of course, few efforts would be as reassuring as being able to get vaccinated, teachers said. This week, state officials announced educators would be the first among essential workers eligible for inoculation under the second part of Phase 1B of the state’s rollout plan, but the timeline still calls for those first shots to be distributed beginning in March.

Until then, it����ap up to schools and communities to work together to ensure students’ success, said Brooke Williams, president of the Jefferson County Education Association.

“I really believe that we’ve taken every precaution we possibly can,” Williams said. “No one wants to be in classrooms more than educators. We really love our students and want to be with them. I’m hopeful we can do this safely.”

These are the reasons Denver police leaders say officers shot and killed three people over the last week. On Wednesday, police leadership offered more details about the string of killings, which police Chief Paul Pazen said was out of the ordinary.

“This is very unusual, but we’re in very unusual times,” he said during a news conference Wednesday.

Pazen and other police officials did not specify whether any of the guns connected to the three police shootings were stolen.

Denver police have shot nine people so far this year, killing all but one. Last year, the agency’s officers shot nine people.

Lt. Matt Clark on Wednesday provided more details on the three most recent shootings, in which no officers were injured. Clark said there is no evidence to suggest any of the men were experiencing mental health crises. Police presented still images from video footage from two of the incidents, but did not play the videos.

Antonio Blackbear, 41, killed Sept. 9

More than a dozen calls poured into Denver’s 911 communications center after 5 p.m., Sept. 9 to report a man walking down a street near West High School pointing a gun at people, Clark said.

The man, later identified as Blackbear, was pointing the weapon at two people in a parked car when police arrived at 5:21 p.m., Clark said. Blackbear turned toward police and walked toward them with the weapon raised and disregarded commands to stop and drop the weapon, police said. Two officers opened fire, and Blackbear was later pronounced dead from his wounds.

The weapon was later identified as an air soft gun without a safety tip, according to a photo of the weapon displayed by police. The officers on scene believed the gun was real, Clark said.

The two officers have not previously been involved in a shooting and are on modified leave while the shooting is investigated.

Christopher Escobedo, 33, killed Sept. 12

Adams County deputies first contacted Escobedo after noticing his vehicle had no license plates, Clark said. Escobedo at first pulled over but sped away as a deputy approached.

The deputies pursued him in a high-speed chase that lasted for 14 minutes and traveled from north of Denver to a street just south of Sloan’s Lake. During the chase, Escobedo fired several bullets at pursuing deputies, Clark said. The female passenger in the car called 911 during the chase and told dispatchers that Escobedo threatened to kill her if they didn’t call off the pursuit, Clark said.

Denver police did not chase the car but helped to try to stop it. Escobedo crashed the car after hitting spiked strips law enforcement use to pop a car’s tires and losing control.

Escobedo and the female passenger climbed out of the car and then Escobedo held the woman hostage with a gun to her head, Clark said.

“The male positioned her between himself and the officers, using her as a human shield,” Clark said.

Denver police and Adams County deputies tried to de-escalate the situation but after nearly two minutes the man started making suicidal and homicidal threats, Clark said. An Adams County deputy positioned in a nearby alley then fired a single shot, striking Escobedo, Clark said.

The woman fled as Escobedo fell. Two Denver officers and two Adams County deputies shot Escobedo while he was on the ground because he still had a gun, which was recovered at the scene, Clark said.

The two Denver police officers, who joined the department in 2018 and 2017, are on modified duty, Clark said.

Sept. 15 shooting of unidentified man

Denver police responded to a call about a man with a gun about 10:34 p.m. Tuesday in the 2400 block of South Colorado Boulevard, Clark said. Officers talked with the man, who has not been identified by the coroner’s office, for several minutes after seeing a grip of a handgun protruding from his pocket.

The man pulled the gun from his pocket, prompting three officers to shoot him, Clark said.

Clark could not answer whether the man pointed the gun at the officers and said the investigation was just beginning.

Investigators recovered a handgun at the scene, Clark said.

The three officers involved are on modified duty. Two joined the department in 2013 and one joined in 2020.

Two Denver Police Department officers fired shots because the man was waving a gun and threatening others, police said Wednesday night during a news conference. The man was taken to a hospital where he died Thursday morning. He has not been identified.

Police were called around 5 p.m. to 10th Avenue and Inca Street where the man was pointing a gun at people in a car, Ron Thomas, a police department division chief said during a Wednesday night news conference. When officers arrived the man turned and advanced toward them, ignoring commands to drop his gun, Ron Thomas, a police department division chief said in the news conference. The officers shot him.

UPDATE: The adult male suspect who was shot in yesterday's officer-involved shooting was pronounced deceased at the hospital this morning. The Office of the Medical Examiner will release his identification. The investigation is ongoing.

— Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice)