It sounds like there was plenty of tension at the Thursday night meeting of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. A vote was held on a proposal to remove all SROs (school resource officers from the Denver Police Department) from all public schools in the district. After four hours of heated debate and public comment, the board voted unanimously to remove them. The number of SROs on campuses is to be reduced by 25% immediately with all remaining officers to be given the boot by June of next year. Going by the local CBS coverage of the meeting, the reasons given for the decision sounded as if they had absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s been going on in the local schools and it was more about national politics than anything else.

In a unanimous vote Thursday night, the Denver Public Schools Board of Education agreed to remove school resource officers from schools. The vote ends the district’s contract with the Denver Police Department.

According to the resolution, DPS will reduce the number of school resource officers by 25% before the end of this year and will remove all school resource officers from schools by no later than June 4, 2021.

DPS Superintendent Susana Cordova tells CBS4 the vote is final, unless the board proposes and votes on something different down the line.

The statement issued by the Superintendent after the vote invokes the name of George Floyd immediately. She then goes on to talk about the need to “do more for our students of color.” What she fails to do is cite a single instance where any SRO has been accused of abusive or racist behavior toward Black or Latino students.

Another board member spoke up, saying that the board needed to take “bold steps in response to police action against those protesting the death of George Floyd in Denver.” What he failed to note was that the SROs weren’t working out on the streets dealing with the riots. So apparently, the SROs need to be punished to teach a lesson to the rest of the regular Denver PD street patrols? It mostly sounds as if the board is trying to “solve” a problem that they don’t even have and are blaming their own resource officers for the perceived incorrect actions of LEOs who don’t even work with them.

That wasn’t the attitude of some of the people who actually work at the schools, however. The principal of North High School chimed in, saying that not a single one of his colleagues he’d spoken to was in favor of the resolution. But the sharpest criticism may have come from Jason Murdock, dean of students at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College.

“So we go after SROs for revenge on DPD? You are a coward, and so are any members that agree with you. Cowards for not fighting the most important fight, racism. Cowards for attacking and assaulting clearly successful SROs simply because of our anger and pain towards law enforcement,” said Murdock.

This would seem even crazier to me if we hadn’t already seen the same thing playing out at other schools around the country. Some of the board members were speaking of their hopes that the money they spend on hiring the SROs could go instead to more “restorative justice coordinators, mental health specialists and additional nurses.” I’m not sure what a restorative justice coordinator is, but it doesn’t sound like they come to work packing heat. So I’d like to know what they plan to do when the front doors burst open and some maniac with firearms comes in and begins lighting the place up.

I’ve pointed this out before, but it bears repeating. We’re seeing liberals around the country who despise the police jumping on the dogpile to take advantage of the George Floyd unrest. In the process, they are carrying out some bizarre form of suicide ritual for our society. And we need to figure out a way to get a handle on this or they’re going to take all the rest of us down with them.