A new Boston Police Department program that will have officers searching teenagers’ rooms for guns after obtaining parental consent has civil rights groups up in arms because they believe people may not be aware of their full constitutional rights.
Under the “Safe Homes” initiative announced last week, plainclothes BPD officers will be targeting high-crime areas. Police may enter the room of a teen suspected of possessing a gun only after getting written permission from parents or guardians. If a gun is found, the teens will not face charges unless ballistics or police investigations determine the gun is connected to a crime.
Although parents can refuse the searches without penalty, Boston University criminology professor and former BPD lieutenant Tom Nolan said he is “troubled” that the constitutional right to a warrant could be bypassed in the process.
“With the Fourth Amendment, you need to find probable cause and then get a search warrant,” Nolan said. “The police have eliminated that judicial oversight.”
Nolan said residents of the city’s poorest and roughest neighborhoods may not know they have the right to refuse the search.
“Because the population of people who have been targeted for this intervention are people who live in the inner city, they may lack the constitutional knowledge to deal with the situation,” he said.
Nolan said the project is a step in the right direction toward getting guns off the street, however.
“Any effort to take handguns away from kids is laudable,” he said. “I think they should look at the source of the weapons and who gives them to the kids and hold them responsible.”
American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts spokeswoman Amy Reichbach said the organization has opposed the initiative and will host programs to educate residents about their constitutional rights.
“We need to make sure people understand what the consequences [are] if they allow the police inside their house,” Reichbach said. “We are concerned that this will not be informed consent.”
Reichbach said the BPD should instead host a gun collection to get weapons off the streets.
A similar program in St. Louis experienced positive results and offers encouragement for Boston’s program, said BPD spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll.
“In its first year, the program in St. Louis removed 90 percent of firearms from the possession from juveniles,” Driscoll said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
