Department of Safety Scraps Safe City Youth Summit in Wake of East High Shooting

“The youth leadership team is extremely upset at this cancellation,” the department acknowledged in a March 23 Facebook post.

Denver officials say the decision was made after DPS announced that classes would be canceled on March 24 for a student “mental health day.” The Safe City Youth Summit was scheduled to take place from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. that day, with kids brought in from around the metro area with chaperones and/or parents. With school canceled, the logistics became impossible.

According to Safety spokesperson Kelly Jacobs, the organizers have no idea when or where the summit will take place now.

“There’s so much up in the air as we determine what to do moving forward,” Jacobs explains. “We’re scrambling to find a place to fit almost 500 people.”

While much is still being decided, the city does know that Denver’s East High shooting and the reintroduction of SROs in high schools will be one of the biggest talking points at the summit, which was created to combat conditions that had led to Denver’s so-called Summer of Violence in 1993.

“It’s definitely something that will be talked about,” Jacobs says, noting that the event’s agenda is driven by the Public Safety Youth Leadership team. “The department will send out information in the coming weeks regarding a new date and location for the event.”

As the Department of Public Safety notes in its description, “The Youth Summit provides teens the opportunity to discuss major issues facing them — including gun violence — and how we as a city and community can better keep them safe and supported while at school and around Denver.” So wouldn’t now have been a great time to hold such an event?

Beth Yohe, executive director of the Conflict Center — a community nonprofit dedicated to providing practical skills and training to address violence and “everyday conflict” — certainly thinks so.

“We believe in the voices of youth,” Yohe says. “Especially now, it’s really important to give youth opportunities to engage with the school district and the city to talk about their needs. And something like a youth summit is really important, and especially important right now.” 

On the department’s website, the city’s Public Safety Youth Leadership Team — which has planned and coordinated the summit for the past 26 years — describes its main purpose as being anchored in constructive conversations about the current state of youth safety and violence. “The Summit’s mission is to create a safe forum for youth to discuss, address, and implement an ongoing youth partnership within the community,” it says.

But with the summit’s postponement, students and local youth who could use this discussion right now have nowhere to go, at least for the time being.

“We urge the city to create opportunities sooner rather than later to center student and community voices,” Yohe says. “To talk about long-term solutions to violence in ways that prioritize actual data…about what things do and don’t work.”

The department understands the need for events like the Safe City Youth Summit during times like these, says one Safety official, noting that “now is the time to be engaging in these difficult conversations.” But once DPS canceled school in favor of a “mental health day,” the summit had to be put off.

“Given that the summit is held on a school day, the event was postponed, not canceled, due to DPS making last Friday a mental health day for students,” Jacobs says. “Executive Director Saldate, Chief Thomas, Mayor Hancock and many others from the city have been in ongoing dialogue with students to discuss these matters directly, and will continue to do so moving forward.”

Jacobs adds that the department and its Youth Leadership Team are “working diligently to a find a new date and location for the summit, which includes complex logistics like finding a new space that can accommodate hundreds of students and breakout rooms, buses, chaperones, vendors and community partners, and DPS’s schedule.”

Yohe and the Conflict Center are hoping the event —which was canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic — can be held as soon as possible. “We recognize the need for people to share their voices, and we recognize that there needs to be an ongoing conversation and action plan,” she says.

The East High shooting has led to widespread conversations about gun violence and school safety around Denver over the past week, and school resource officers, which the DPS board banned in June 2020, will be reintroduced next week.

According to Department of Safety officials, the shooting has been weighing heavily on the minds of people involved with the Safe City Youth Summit.

“The Department of Safety is committed to continuing to listen and work alongside our youth and our community to ensure the safety of our students,” Jacobs notes. “In addition to our civilian Public Safety Youth Programs staff already working with students, the decision to bring officers back to some DPS schools for the remainder of the school year offers a great opportunity for partnership. Addressing youth violence and keeping our students safe continues to be among the department’s top priorities, and always will be.”