East High School students are in danger, as is every student in Denver Public Schools.
What’s worse is that the City of Denver and Denver Public Schools have known that youth gun violence was increasing since early 2019 when The Denver Post’s Elise Schmelzer uncovered data showing that 2018 was a record year with 15 children dying from gun violence.
Schmelzer reported last month that while overall homicides were down in Denver in 2022, 17 teens were killed in Denver last year, which was a fifth of all homicide victims. Another 70 teens, a staggering number of lives upended by bullets, were shot and injured.
Most of the shooters were other teens whose lives were also ruined by their decision to pick up a firearm and target a peer.
We’ve felt a lack of urgency on this issue, and now, for another student at East High School fighting for his life in a hospital bed, it is too late. The student was shot on Feb. 13 in a car leaving East High School and has a poor prognosis, according to police.
It is also too late for an adult and a 17-year-old shot minutes after the East High School shooting outside at a downtown Denver campus that includes three schools and the DPS administration building.
And, it is too late for the student shot a block away from East High School in September, just after school had let out, suffering a gunshot wound to his face and requiring surgery.
Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero issued a plea at a public school board meeting in November, saying gun violence is “a ticking time bomb.”
“I can’t stay silent any longer,” he said.
Colorado Public Radio reported that last school year, 200 weapons were found at school, including 13 guns and 28 fake guns, and this school year was on track for similarly alarming numbers.
And the violence isn’t isolated to Denver.
Two related shootings injured nine Aurora Public School students in November 2021; their lives were saved by a quick emergency response.
This is the type of crisis that requires cities and the state to remake their budgets, allocating resources to the types of interventions we know work to stem youth crime – mental health care in schools, social workers connecting with families, paid meaningful internships after school, teacher-led after school programs, and school district led security enhancements to detect guns in schools and in parking lots. Denver’s police investigators have already made an arrest in the most recent shooting at East High School, but the investigation must go deeper, looking at how the gun used in the crime was obtained and whether it was related to organized crime.
These interventions should be data-led. Which schools have the highest number of students arrested over the past four years for violent offenses? What are the siblings and friends of that incarcerated youth doing now? How can we intervene to set those children on a path that will be better for them and better for society?
Because of laws protecting juvenile victims and perpetrators from identification, this is data that only police and school districts can compile working together. We need this information, and collection should start immediately. The data also should be made public, so Colorado’s non-profits can work collaboratively to save young lives too.
We have already waited too long to act.
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