While dropping kids off at school, parents across Denver often enter an over-caffeinated, lawless hellscape.
“When I’m in the vicinity of those schools at pick up and drop off time, it really feels like the Wild West,” said Melissa Colonno, who has three kids, one in elementary school, another in middle school and a third in high school. “Parents or whoever's driving — they do what they need to do to get their kids to and from school. But lots of those things are not legal.”
Parents speed, drive recklessly and park in no-parking zones so their children beat the bell — even if it means endangering other students also trying to beat the bell. There are few safeguards.
“I think people's behavior changes when they know someone with authority is watching them,” Colonno said.
But should those authority figures be armed officers? Many pedestrian advocates and the Denver Police Department agree: probably not.
Police are issuing fewer tickets during traffic stops in school safety zones than they were before the pandemic shutdowns.
That’s according to records from 2019 through 2023 that Denverite requested from Denver County Court.
The most tickets on record in the past five years were issued before COVID-19 hit the city, in September 2019, when DPD issued around 800 tickets in safety zones. In the first half of the 2019-2020 school year, there were an average of 510 tickets issued per month.
Ticketing hit an all-time low during the pandemic shutdowns, with DPD issuing fewer than two tickets some months. Schools were largely closed during quarantine, and there weren't any students around to keep safe.
While ticketing rose from zero as schools reopened, it has never hit pre-pandemic highs.
The highest number of tickets issued during stops since the pandemic was 373 in May of 2023, with an average of 181 tickets being issued by police in active school months between 2021 and 2023.
That’s a 64 percent decrease in the average number of monthly tickets officers issued during stops.
Fatalities from car crashes have risen citywide in the same time frame police enforcement has slowed down in school zones and beyond.
They hit an eight-year high of 71 in 2019, dropped the first year of the pandemic, and then rose in 2021 and 2022 to an all-time high of 84. In 2023, they dropped again to 83.
Why did the Denver Police Department stop pulling so many people over in school zones?
During the summer of 2020, there was a national reckoning with police violence after the murder of George Floyd, Elijah McClain and multiple unarmed Black people.
Since then, police-executed traffic stops have come under scrutiny.
Denver Police Department itself intentionally pulled back from pulling people over for low-level traffic stops citywide, including in school zones, explained Division Chief Rick Kyle, who oversees traffic enforcement.
“We continue to do enforcement,” Kyle explained. “Lower-level stops, we are kind of being more judicious about when we make those,” largely to avoid escalation and needless violent encounters.
“In the area of safety violations, speeding, running stop signs, running red lights, we continue to do enforcement in those areas,” he said.
Instead of so many traffic stops, the department is working on what Kyle calls a 'multipronged approach' to traffic safety in school zones.
At the beginning of each school year, DPD identifies the schools with the highest potential for traffic safety issues. The department works with the school on traffic education for students, families and teachers.
“We've actually seen more people either driving their children to school or kids walking to school, versus using the bus that they used before the pandemic,” Kyle said. “So we've actually used our officers quite a bit for traffic control because congestion has become a big issue, which leads to the inability for people to speed because there's so much traffic congestion.”
The city also uses photo and radar enforcement. Kyle explained that the number of citations through those technologies has been fairly steady and far higher than tickets issued by armed officers.
According to Denver Police Department data, 41,382 tickets were issued from photo enforcement in 2022 and 34,384 in 2023. The drop in 2023 occurred when the Department changed contractors.
The city also uses speed trailers and signs that visually signal when people are speeding and help them self-regulate. Some of those devices also track patterns of speeding by time of day, helping the department plan enforcement efforts.
“The other thing that we do is we work on the environment, the streets, the traffic environment, the traffic engineering,” Kyle said, noting that the police often work with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure on recommending infrastructure changes.
Some advocates are enthusiastic about the drop in police ticketing, even as they acknowledge traffic safety issues abound.
Robert Davis, of the Denver Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety, an organization working on reforms to the criminal justice system, says there are better ways to control traffic than policing.
“We are not anti-enforcing speeding,” he explained. “We just do not believe that armed law enforcement needs to do it.”
His group has partnered with the Denver Streets Partnership to advocate for traffic safety policies that remove police departments’ role in enforcement.
“Speeding is definitely a problem citywide, not just in school safety zones,” explained Jill Locantore, head of the Denver Streets Partnership. “And we know speeding is one of the biggest contributors to whether a crash happens and whether the crash results in a serious injury and a fatality.”
She wants to see speed mitigation at the heart of Vision Zero, the city’s plan to eliminate all traffic deaths.
“We've designed the street to make it as enticing as possible to speed but then we're going to pull you over and slap you with a ticket,” Locantore said, describing it as a form of “entrapment.” “You know, it's just not an awesome way to approach safety issues. Though our preference has always been to focus on street design changes that just really reinforce safe speeds.”
Instead of enforcement, armed or otherwise, Locantore would like to see traffic-calming infrastructure: speed bumps, diverters, and traffic circles designed to slow people down.
Meanwhile, since infrastructure changes take time to build, she acknowledges some enforcement is necessary. Her preference would be automated radar and photo enforcement available 24/7, 365 days a year.
“Something we've been calling for is for automated enforcement to be shifted from the purview of the police department over to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure because it should be part of the design and operation of the transportation system,” Locantore said. “This is much more about preventing traffic crashes in the first place, preventing unsafe behavior in the first place, and less about traditional policing activities.”
Colonno, the parent who wants some sort of authority present in school safety zones, doesn’t think that necessarily needs to be police.
Colonno often bikes her kids to school. Her kid’s elementary school has staff serve as crossing guards, and when they’re present, she feels safer.
“They’re wonderful,” she said. “But sometimes they come out late. Sometimes they miss a shift.”
She’d like to see safer street infrastructure across town and hopes Denver Public Schools could hire crossing guards citywide.
“You really notice the difference in the car drivers’ behavior when the crossing guards are present,” she said. “And when they’re not present, the cars roll through the stop sign and try to hurry on their way without yielding to a pedestrian or bicyclist.”
This year, the city has already recorded 19 traffic deaths. By 2030, Denver is aiming to have zero.
