The Denver school board voted to return police to schools amid concerns about gun violence, the Wall Street Journal reports. The board had removed officers from schools in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd. A flashpoint before police were returned was the killing of East High student Luis Garcia on March 1. Two days after he was shot, students protested at the state capitol. “Go to the source,” Norah, an East High freshman, said at one student rally. “The source is the guns.” Police on campus, she said, isn’t enough. Then, on March 22, a student shot two deans. Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero placed armed police officers at East High until summer. Marrero released a second draft of a school safety plan before the Memorial Day weekend, saying that the board needed to make a decision about returning police districtwide. School board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson said teacher and principal support for school police didn’t matter because they wouldn’t be the ones who risked arrest. “The Black kids that share my skin will be arrested,” he said. Marrero promised that school police wouldn’t target Black and Latino students and that his administration was particularly sensitive to such worries. The following week, the board met again. After nearly four hours of debate, it voted 4-3 to bring back campus police, who would be closely monitored by the district.
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