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.
You are right they have no duty to protect the public, their job is to maintain the status quo and defend capitalist interests. Two guesses into which category searching for this book in a middle school falls under.
When people say police have no duty to protect the public, they are talking about a legal affirmative duty to act.
Usually the law does not impose a duty to act. If you see someone drowning, it's not negligent to NOT jump into the water and save the person. You can stand there and watch your neighbor's kid drown and you're neither breaking the law nor being negligent. Even if your neighbor's kid screams for help and looks right at you and says please help me, it's legal to do nothing: there is no affirmative duty to rescue.
It's the same for police. The exception are when there is a fiduciary relationship, if you created the peril, or if you start rescuing someone you can't leave them worse off. Usually these exceptions don't apply to police, even if you call and ask for help, they have no duty to act. That doesn't mean they won't show up and do their best. Just means you can't sue them for negligence if they fail to save you.
Therapists, doctors, lawyers, architects, have legal duties to act.
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.
The full news article states that they do not have that authority, this is just ass covering by wanna be heroes of oppression.
This "report" was done anonymously probably for the reason they knew it was BS, and just looking at the report should have been enough to dismiss it. At the very most a phone call to see if the school wanted to handle it, but sending an officer should get all involved parties suspended without pay. That principal should have also called bullshit and never escorted a cop to a classroom to search for a book. They should also be suspended and the policy gone over again on what to do with these bullshit book banning "reports" (deleted/recycled).
Edit - extra shit
The problem with the principal refusing to escort the officer is then they are obstructing a police investigation, and that is a crime. It isn't fair to put this burden on them, the blame lies squarely with the police chain of command.
In fact the root problem of all things police is that once police decide to do something, even if that thing is illegal, interfering is a crime.
This is how we end up with people being charged with resisting arrest, and no other crimes that would warrant an arrest. This is also how we end up with a bunch of people live streaming George Floyd's execution, because stopping a cop from killing someone is a crime.
Yeah I don't believe it either. The courts have agreed the cops don't have to help anyone.
Yeah, but that's because they don't want to help people. They actively recruit cops who hate the communities they're going to police.
So it's never an issue when they're asked to do harm. That's why they became cops.
And furthermore, what exactly are they really protecting the public from? A book that talks about queer identities? Instead we should put bibles into every kids hands, bibles only contain rape, incest, murder, and genocide on a global scale. Nothing that would warp a kid's brain. (Rolling eyes).
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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?
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