In Which Bon Is Utterly Shocked

It shows you what I know.  Until today, I thought there was no way a police officer could interrogate a minor and avoid informing them of their rights.  Or speak with them when their parents are not present, let alone legal representation.  Or that principals and school staff would assist police in getting information by participating in the interrogation process, ganging up on the child and omitting important information.  I realize the Miranda warning is required to be read only once a person is officially detained and in custody.  However, a child who has not yet been educated on how the law works (and thirteen falls safely in there) would not realize the distinction.  In an act of good faith, children should be dealt with in the most ethical and cautious fashion possible.


Now I know better.  And I truly feel sick.

This case, involving a 13-year-old North Carolina boy identified only as J.D.B., will likely change police practices across the country. Experts say that police questioning, particularly in school, can no longer be presumed to be legally permissible without advising a youngster of his or her rights.

J.D.B., a special-education seventh grader, was pulled out of his classroom by a uniformed officer and escorted to a conference room where he faced a police investigator, the assistant principal and two other school officials.

For more than half an hour, the investigator interrogated J.D.B. about a string of local burglaries. The boy's legal guardian, his grandmother, was never contacted, and he was not given a Miranda warning — the warnings routinely given by police to criminal suspects once they are taken into custody.

My greatest shock is that this is even a topic of discussion.  If I had a child in the public school system, I would completely expect to be notified before my child was interviewed for any reason, and that any decent police officer would tell that child they had rights in this situation.  Kids are taught police officers are their friends, and in a child's mind there is not a choice when bullied by the power school staff and police hold in their minds.  This is disgusting.

But it is unclear how Thursday's decision will affect the way police interact with student-suspects. "In many places, there's a routine practice of trying to contact a parent," said Saltzburg (a professor of criminal law at George Washington University). "But in many [other] instances, if the parent is not available, the police have good reason not to want to delay, and in some instances, the fact is that they don't want the parent present. And unless the law requires the parent to be present, they will proceed with an interrogation."

The police are your friend, my ass.  I realize they have a job to do, but they are supposed to uphold the law and take the ethical path.  Children (legal minors) should not have to face this level of betrayal by those they have been conditioned to trust.  Move along, Citizen.  There is nothing to see here.