Denver police are asked to respond to high-priority calls at Denver Public Schools at a similar rate regardless of whether there are school resource officers present or not, 9Wants to Know found.

School resource officers were phased out of DPS in 2021. They returned to schools this week after a student shot and injured two administrators at East High School in March.

Officers were called to DPS schools for higher-priority calls about as many times in 2022 as they were in 2019, the data shows.

There were 927 high-priority calls in 2019 and 841 in 2022. Those higher priority calls were typically for a suicidal person, a fight or weapons.

In-person classes were not held in DPS schools for much of 2020 due to the pandemic.

Seventeen SROs were removed from 18 DPS school campuses by the end of 2021 with a goal of “dismantling the school to prison pipeline,” according to a DPS primer on the project.

The document said the other roughly 170 schools in the district operated without SROs and would “continue to do so.”

DPS has its own Department of Safety with 140 team members, but 9NEWS has reported that they must call DPD to make an arrest. The safety team members have the authority to issue tickets for minor offenses like drug possession and fighting.

Most of the more urgent calls were to the campus of Denver Center for International Studies at Montbello, Noel Community Art School and STRIVE Prep Montbello.

Andrea Webber, records administrator for Denver’s Department of Public Safety, wrote in an email that it was difficult to identify the exact location of each call at campuses with multiple schools at the same addresses.

From 2018 to this year, police were called to these five DPS campuses most often for high-priority calls:

1. Montbello High School, 5000 N. Crown Blvd.: 105 calls
2. Denver North High School, 2960 N. Speer Blvd.: 100 calls
3. Denver West Middle School, 951 N. Elati St.: 95 calls
4. Lake Middle School, 1820 N. Lowell Blvd.: 93 calls
5. Green Valley Ranch Middle School, 4800 N. Telluride St.: 91 calls

The total number of calls from DPS to DPD was up slightly in 2022 compared to the past couple of years, but down from a high of 10,509 calls in 2018.

Most calls were for special assignments like parades, “self-initiated actions” and assaults. A self-initiated action is when an officer initiates an investigation themselves without being called to do so.

Scott Pribble, a DPS spokesperson, wrote in an email that no one cause for this trend stands out.

“There are a myriad of possible reasons for these numbers, but not a specific cause such as a change in District policy,” Pribble wrote.

It is uncertain whether the pandemic affected the number of calls and in what way.

Read about the data process here.

Reach investigative reporter Zack Newman at 303-548-9044. Email: zack.newman@9news.com. Call or text is preferred over email.