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.
Police have wide discretion about how much effort to put into any particular investigation. This is how it should have been handled:
“Hello Mr. Principal. This is the police. We have a complaint about a book called Gender Queer, which allegedly contains obscenity. Do you have that book in your library? You do? Okay, in your expert opinion, as a teacher and principal, do you believe that this book is obscene? No? Okay then, have a nice day.”
Notes made in the database. Investigation fllagged as complete. Complaint unfounded. The school takes responsibility for the content. The parent who complained can take it up with the school board.
Instead the police took it upon themselves to get into the business of determining whether a school library book is obscene. What a stupid quagmire to wander into. Clearly, someone in the police department lacks good judgment.
lol, imagine a cop recognizing outside expertise and working to deescalate a situation. We can still dream…
Of course, this runs up against the fact that cops are lazy fucks who want to get out of doing paperwork as much as possible. Clearly this particular cop could’ve dropped the issue and expended a minimum of effort on a cursory report, but the fact that they (the cop was unnamed in this article, which seems like important information to include, especially considering all the names of educators that were listed) made it a mission to go full sherlock on this issue indicates that they have an axe to grind about it.
Are police obligated to do anything? Like… literally anything?
It’s my understanding that it’s up to the department how police conduct themselves. If the department doesn’t do anything about their behavior and the community keeps funding it, then why would cops change?