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.
But Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti said in a statement, “Because this complaint was made directly to the police department, we are obligated and have a duty to examine the complaint further."
I call bullshit, and would like to see the law and/or court rulings that support this assertion.
Because if cops have no duty to protect the public, then in what sense do they have a duty to take this complaint seriously?
Anyone who has had their bike stolen or car broken into or otherwise be victim of a crime the police don’t really care about knows this is not the case. You’ll be told to come in and fill out a form, or if you’re lucky you might have someone call you and fill out the form for you. They’re not going to send a cop out for that, and the form doesn’t really get acted on, it’s just for records keeping.
The last time I had my car broken into, they sent an officer out to take the report. They, of course, did nothing with that report, and I found the person who had broken into my car later through reliable sources.
Last time I had my car broken into they told me to file a report online. It took them over a year to send a form letter reply saying they got it.
