Police Officers’ Right to Search Minor Students and Their Belongings, Essay Example

Introduction

Public schools all over the country are becoming increasingly concerned about the issues of safety and security. The growing incidence of violence and the availability of guns to children and adolescents make it difficult for public schools to develop effective safety strategies. More often than not, deploying security and policy officers in schools is considered to be an effective solution to safety issues. Unfortunately, law enforcement professionals who are bound to work in schools lack a clear vision of how to govern their actions against safety threats in schools. Minor students often become the objects of unreasonable searches by law enforcement professionals in schools, and such searches do not leave students a chance to protect themselves. Despite its complexity, the conflict between safety and privacy in public schools can be easily resolved through the development and implementation of a well-integrated public school policy. School police officers should have the right to search minor students and their possessions if they have a reasonable expectation or a ground to suspect that a minor student threats public school safety, with the criteria for reasonable expectation and search specified in a formal school safety policy, of which students and police officers working at school must be aware.

The end of the 20^th-the beginning of the 21^st century in America and in the whole world was marked with the growing incidence of gun violence in public schools. To reduce public safety threats and to minimize the negative impact of potential gun crimes, thousands of police agents and security officers were employed to serve the safety needs of public schools. In 2004 alone, 60 percent of high school teachers reported the presence of police officers on school grounds, while in 2005 this percentage rose to almost 70 percent (Kim & Geronimo 5). These school agents, most frequently sworn police officers, were expected to maintain the atmosphere of safety in public schools and to address potential and emerging safety threats (Kim & Geronimo 6). Unfortunately, more often than not, police officers do not realize that public schools require special policing methodology. Maintaining safety atmosphere without a formal policy document in public schools is simply impossible. Minor students often become objects of unreasonable searches, while officers justify their search claims by the desire and obligations to promote security and safety in schools, for which they work. However, this conflict between security and privacy is easy to resolve if public schools develop a well-integrated security policy, which will define and provide criteria for reasonable searches of minor students.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution directly prohibits law enforcement agencies from performing unreasonable searches of citizens, including minor students, and seizing their property (FindLaw). However, statistical research reveals the link between minority status of students and their predisposition to crime (Kim & Geronimo 11), thus making minor students in public schools particularly vulnerable to unreasonable searches of their belongings. To protect the rights of minor students and to give officers the right to search minor students and their belongings, public schools should develop a formal document which will (a) identify reasonable grounds for searching a minor student and/ or his (her) belongings and (b) will define the areas in which such search is allowed/ prohibited, or in other words, the areas in which minor students will have a reasonable expectation of privacy. To begin with, a good formal school policy will specify the instances / criteria for a reasonable search. For example, police officers should have the right to search minor students with mental health problems, those who are suspected to be drunk, or those who behave unnaturally (too active, too passive, too aggressive or even violent). Furthermore, a well-developed formal school policy will define the list of places and areas, where minor students have a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus are not legally subject to any search of seizure of their property (e.g., private lockers, private tables, and rest rooms). More often than not, minor students may have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to some of their belongings, including purses and backpacks. Finally, a formal school policy should be distributed among students, teachers, and police officers, to make sure that all parties of a potential conflict know their rights and responsibilities.

Although such policy resolves some of the emerging safety problems in schools, the border between safety and security in school environment remains increasingly blurred. To be full and consistent, such school policies should govern the searches of minor students and their belongings in a way, which distinguishes between criminal offenses and disciplinary misconduct by police officers, respects the rights of all children, promotes transparency and accountability of all safety procedures, and provides minimum training requirements for officers admitted to work in public schools (Kim & Geronimo 7). It is very possible, that the criteria for reasonable expectation of privacy will work against the principles of safety in schools, turning private areas into convenient places for safety misconduct among minor students. It is also possible that minor students will lack knowledge and experience to understand and use the new policy to protect their interests. However, without such policy, police officers and security professionals in schools will flame the fans of racism and ethnic tensions. Moreover, without such policy, security officers may legal justification for their actions in case they are aimed to protect schools from criminal and safety threats. As a result, a good school policy, combined with the high level of awareness among students and teachers, will become the starting point in the process of balancing the need for security with the need for privacy and protecting the basic individual rights of minor students in public places, including schools.

Conclusion

The end of the 20^th and the beginning of the 21^st centuries were marked with the growing incidence of gun violence in public schools. Given the direct link between minority status and predisposition to crimes, minor students often become the direct objects of unreasonable searches and seizures by school officers. In this context, to promote better school safety and to help minor students protect their individual rights, a formal well-developed governance policy should identify the criteria for reasonable search and to define areas, where minor students should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Such policy may fail to resolve all privacy and safety issues in public schools, but will become the starting point in the process of balancing privacy needs of minor students with the safety needs of public schools.

Works Cited

FindLaw. “U.S. Constitution: Fourth Amendment.” 2009. Find Law. 16 December 2009. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/

Kim, C.Y. & I.I. Geronimo. “Policing in Schools.” 2009. American Civil Liberties Union. 16 December 2009. http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/racialjustice/whitepaper_policinginschools.pdf