Denver, CO – Community members are horrified after they say police officers conducted a classroom-to-classroom search with guns drawn and interrogated teachers and students in a charter school, all to look for a student who was absent. While the police department released a statement justifying the incident, teachers are claiming that police are lying “to save face.”
“The staff and students were traumatized,” Lucas Ketzer, principal at Rise Up Community School, told the Denver Post as he described the way a group of police officers raided the building in their search for a student who was not in attendance.
Officers stormed the school and began searching the classrooms, and Ketzer said that when a science teacher “told officers they could not search her room without a warrant” they pushed her aside, and entered the classroom where they “pulled students out of their chairs, removed their hats and asked them for their IDs as they searched.”
“When I was sitting in class, they came bursting in, and then they were like in everybody’s faces, like looking at us, and I felt so unsafe,” student Mary Jimenez told Padres & Jóvenes Unidos. She said the officers singled one student out, grabbed him by the arm, and forced him to remove his hat so that they could compare him to the photo of the student they were targeting.
The principal also told the Post that the officers scoured the building with their guns drawn and when a faculty member opened a back door to check for students, “multiple officers pointed their guns at her.”
However, when the Denver Police Department released a statement responding to the incident, it claimed that the “officers that were inside, did not draw their weapons at any point during the search for the suspect.”
On April 24th, 2018, Denver Police officers responded to Rise Up Community School in search of a suspect wanted for attempted first-degree murder—this incident occurred the night before in another metro-area jurisdiction. Officers received information that the suspect was in the school, and given the nature of the allegations, believed the suspect posed a possible threat to students and staff.
When officers arrived, they set up outside of the school to ensure the suspect did not leave the building. Given the imminent and potentially dangerous circumstances, and confirmation from a staff member that the suspect was inside, a warrant was not required to search inside the building for the suspect.
While the statement claimed that police worked “with the principal to eventually gain access to the building,” and then after the raid, “staff met with the principal to discuss the situation and offered a follow-up meeting,” teachers and faculty members at the school are insisting that the opposite is true.
Ketzer told ABC 7 that police “never told him there was any threat,” and when he told the officers that the student they were looking for was not at the school, they refused to believe him and proceeded to search every classroom in the building.
“Those lies put the safety of 100 students at risk and those lies are meant for them to save face. I want people to be held accountable,” Ketzer said.
The school principal also noted that the majority of the students at Rise Up Community School came to the charter school after they had struggles at other schools, many of which involved bad experiences with police. As a result, Ketzer said he is concerned that being interrogated by officers when they were attempting to learn in school, would only serve to further destroy the students’ trust in police.
Padres & Jóvenes Unidos is condemning the incident and calling it an example of why police should not be given open access to schools. In a statement, the organization called for an investigation and accused the Denver Police Department of choosing “to put students and teachers in harm’s way.”
“After being informed by the administration that the student was not at school, DPD waited approximately fifteen minutes—during which time they conferred with the DPS Department of Safety—before conducting a search. They refused to produce a warrant when asked, and armed officers went from classroom to classroom harassing students and staff. At one point weapons were drawn on a member of the faculty,” the statement said.
Footage of the police raid on the school has yet to be publicly released. If you would like to contact the Denver Police Department to voice your opinion on this incident, call (720) 913-2000 or visit the department’s Facebook page.
Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and Patreon. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
‘Murica!
…and they wonder why they keep getting ambushed and killed….
Get used to it everyone! None of us actually live in a democracy anymore.
It’s all a complete facade. This is what you get when you get deceptive, cunning yet very nasty idiots in power. That combined with castrated men thanks to the feminist movement & a dumbed down, drugged up population who won’t/ can’t do anything about it & you a totalitarian police state thats unchallenged.
& THAT everyone is why they want the guns!
Let them grab those & you can kiss all pretence of rights & freedoms goodbye.
The police state is laughing at you & rubbing it in your face with this one.
Succinctly said, specially describing the personalities of those in ‘power’. I completely concur. Reading history, I cannot find a time when citizens, people, handing over their self determination over to others has ever worked out for them. Sovereignty and hierarchy will never work out for the public masses.
Never has.
“He was ‘like'”, “I was ‘like'”, “it was ‘like'”,…drives me bonkers. 4th paragraph: Welcome to the NWO, same as the OWO(Old world order). 11th paragraph: imagine that. But, sadly, these are the personalities that ‘authority’, ‘justice’, depts and agencies look for. Activist Post has most excellently covered this topic many times. Trained(indoctrinated?) to shoot first and ask questions(cover up) later. And, that citizens are ‘insects, bugs, roaches’; vermin.
Isn’t it funny how nothing is startling anymore. We have given up so much freedom that anything the State does seems almost expected. We are and have been under a police state and thanks to the socialist/ globalists it will just get worse and WE have allowed it to happen.
COPS SEARCH SCHOOL FOR TRUANT STUDENT. :/
Exactly! Beyond stupid.
Not just Denver’s but many, many American police forces have slipped over the edge into fascist territory. When a warrant is required for searches, then why didn’t the police have one and why did they ignore the request to stop searching, until they produced one? Why do police think that they can ignore the laws of the nation? If their guns were drawn then every child in that school was put at risk to find a truant and where do they look for a truant? Why at the school of course! How abysmally foolish and dangerous. Some heads should roll.
The police can ignore anything or anyone at any time they choose to do so. There IS no law here today. There has not been any lawful government in what is called “The United States of America” since March 27, 1861. The secession of the nations that then formed a new republic ended the republic that was properly known as the united states of America under the constitution for the united states of America. That republic was originally formed by nine, and shortly thereafter by thirteen, sovereign nations under a covenant in which those nations agreed not to exercices certain rights they had as a nation, and ONLY those rights, and to give certain powers, and again, ONLY those powers listed in the constitution to the federal government. The secession came about when the federal government failed to enforce the requirement that each nation-state respect the laws of other states. This is clearly stated in the Articles of Secession of South Carolina, the first state to secede. The other nation-states closely followed that model. There was at that time, and still isn’t, any law, or any part of the constitution, that prohibited any nation-state or group of nation-states from withdrawing from participation as a member state. At the time of the secession, the constitutional republic dissolved. Before March 28, 1861, both houses of congress, including the members newly elected in 1860, adjourned without setting any date to reconvene, and went home. Abraham Lincoln, the last person to be elected president of the united states of America, on April 15, 1861, issued the first “executive order” ever issued that was NOT issued in the course of seeing “that the laws are faithfully executed”; the only power the president has under the constitution with respect to making law. After the War of Secession (or northern aggression) the seceded nations were governed as an occupied country until 1871. On February 23, 1871, a private municipal corporation was formed. It had no authority to conduct the business of the federal government. Neither did its two successor corporations. The “president” was actually the CEO, and “congress” are the directors. Since June 9, 1933, the corporation has operated under receivership of the International Monetary Fund in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is the matrix in which we live our lives in delusion. Our “government” is a carefully crafted criminal enterprise that began in 1861, went through an undeclared war of aggression that “ended” slavery by making slaves of everyone.
Law Enforcement Officer = Domestic Terrorist
Peace Officer = citizen hero
The Denver police will never release bodycam footage of this because it will show them searching with guns drawn.
Conditioning exercise. The point is for them to get used to it. Which does not mean it will become less traumatic. The Wicked Witch is trying to cast a spell on these poor Munchkins. Good thing Toto wasn’t there or they would have shot him.