A cop’s decision to sport a body camera and search a Massachusetts middle school for a book has raised serious concerns among civil liberties experts, a new report shows.
The Berkshire Eagle reported Wednesday on mounting fears after the Great Barrington plainclothes police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.
“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia," Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told the local news outlet. "What are we doing?”
For their part, police say they were obligated to investigate a complaint about the book “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, a memoir about gender identity that contains sexually explicit illustrations and language, the report notes.
With a complaint and a full description of the offense, the officer had cause to force entry.
Same as if someone called in a suspicious package, they wouldn’t need a warrant to gain entry.
Society gives police an incredible amount of leeway.
On the complaint of a book? I’ll call bullshit on that, and no way that would hold up in any sane court. A book is not something that should give police any probable cause, and really something that the police shouldn’t even be investigating. Having police coming in to schools to look for books is so far out of what they should be doing the principal should have laughed and called the station to ask what the hell is going on over there.
I agree with you, but it doesn’t change the implications of a police officer having a complaint and a sufficient description to follow up on it without a warrant.
It is at their discretion, same as if you called in that your grandma didn’t answer the phone, they could ignore it or bust down the door. Both would be fully legal.
Court is a different matter. A judge could say there wasn’t cause to search after the fact, but that won’t change what the police do in the moment.