No Miranda Rights For School Children

Up Against the Wall Motherhugger (Image by sass_face)

The Supreme Court heard a case last week in which a 13-year-old North Carolina boy was interrogated by police, at his school, without being read his rights. Until a person is officially in custody, they are not entitled to Miranda rights, the L.A. Times reported. The police argued that the boy was not in custody.

The boy was suspected of being involved in two break-ins. He was questioned in a school conference room without being arrested. The police officer even told him he could leave at one point, indicating that he was not in custody. However, to a 13-year-old, the situation would certainly feel like an arrest and the boy confessed, as a result. 

Under such circumstances, a teenager is unlikely to feel free to get up and leave or to refuse to cooperate, particularly with police and school officials hovering over him. Even an adult under these circumstances might feel like he didn’t have any choice. However, a child has much less experience and knowledge of his rights than an adult and is much less likely to feel confident enough to assert his rights when confronted by authority figures.

Additionally, schools are increasingly starting to feel like prisons. It has become common to find armed police on campus. Indeed, many now have their own liaison officers stationed on campus. Furthermore, many schools now have metal detectors or require some form of security clearance to obtain entry. Kids are monitored by video and closed circuit cameras. Their laptops have video cameras that spy on them. Their movements are controlled on campus. For many students, the distinction between being at school and being in custody may be negligible.

Alito, Scalia and Roberts were skeptical of the arguments in defense of youth Miranda rights and seemed unlikely to rule in favor of youth rights. Nevertheless, however the Court rules, it is critical that adults educate kids about their rights and how to protect themselves from harassment by other adults such as the police, ICE, employers and child exploiters.

LA School COP: Oops, My Bad, I Shot Myself

Look Officer, Use A Toy Gun Next Time (by coralinetheblue)

Jeffrey Stenroos, the LAUSD Police Officer who shot himself recently, prompting the lockdown of nine Los Angeles area schools, has told investigators that he accidentally shot himself. LAPD spent days searching for a parolee they thought had shot the officer.

The incident provoked a lock down of nine schools for as much as five hours, with students unable to leave their classrooms for food, water or the restroom.

The hoax and its consequences for LA students highlight the problems with LAUSD’s lockdown policy. Over the past month, more than a dozen schools have been locked down in separate incidents, with students confined to a classroom for as much as five hours. LAUSD is using the lockdown more for social control than for students’ safety. Neither LAPD nor LAUSD have dealt with the recent incidents rationally or reasonably, holding kids like prisoners far longer than necessary, so they could “secure” the area casually without disruption by students and their families. For example, rather than questioning Stenroos sufficiently to assess the credibility of his claims, it was assumed he was too traumatized to talk. Yet he was wearing a bullet proof vest and he was a police officer, someone who should be able to give evidence under duress.

The incident also highlights a terrible flaw in the policy.  Anyone can call the police claiming to have witnessed an armed suspect near a school and provoke a lockdown that not only undermines students’ liberty, safety and dignity, but that also steals valuable class time from them.