Written by: Zoe Rawson, volunteer Attorney with the Community Rights Campaign

The Community Rights Campaign recently provided a "Know Your Rights" training where students, parents and organizers came out from around the city. We focused on the daytime curfew restrictions (informally known as "truancy tickets") the court process and we covered legal rights on police and school searches. As a group, we analyzed the ways in which the police, the schools and the courts interact with students and communities. Participants shared their experiences and insights and, unfortunately, we struggled as a group with the blatant inconsistencies that keep emerging with what is happening on the streets and in our schools versus the legal rights that we were learning should be protected.

After speaking with hundreds of students throughout LAUSD, and with parents and teachers, it has become overwhelmingly clear to the Campaign that citing students for truancy, under LAMC 45.04, is resulting in highly suspect police interactions and searches of the students. Despite a California Supreme Court case that explicitly states that suspicion of tardiness or truancy from class provides, "no reasonable basis for conducting a search of any kind," students are reporting pat downs, searches of their pockets and searches of their bags as a routine practice once they have been stopped by police for being late to school.

The case is named In re William G., and the court followed the United States Supreme Court in articulating the standard for searches conducted by school officials as requiring a reasonable suspicion that a student has violated the law or a school rule that must be based on facts connecting the student that is searched to the alleged violation. The search itself must also be limited in its scope so that it is tailored to the suspicion. What this means in plain language is that a school official has actual knowledge or personal observation of conduct that can be directly tied to a specific violation in order to warrant the suspicion. And, once a suspicion exists, the door does not open to conduct broad searches in areas normally protected by the 4th Amendment right of the U.S. Constitution that limits police power.

According to the U. S. Supreme Court, in New Jersey v. T.L.O., a search by school officials must be limited in scope because it is a severe violation of our expectations of privacy similar to a search of an adult conducted by the police. So being at a school does not take away the fact that each of us expect that we should have the freedom to be in our homes and communities and make choices about our actions that are within our legal rights, without being bothered by the police.

But even a search limited in its scope makes no sense when a student is suspected of truancy. What evidence of a truancy violation could a school official uncover in a backpack? If they are looking for a student's intention to attend class on time, or even go to school at all, I am quite certain that it will not be found in a pocket or backpack.

The standard is even higher for the police rather than a school official to conduct a lawful search under the Fourth Amendment of either an adult or a minor. Not only must the police have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity but to complete even just a limited search before an arrest, such as a pat down of outer clothing, they must also have reason to suspect that the person being searched is armed or dangerous.

Since I began volunteering as an attorney to assist students and families receiving truancy tickets, I have heard multiple accounts of searches that take place seemingly as a routine practice without any circumstances that would support a reasonable belief that the search could turn up evidence of a crime other than truancy. In fact, in an article from The San Fernando Sun from March of this year, LAPD Officer Homberg admits to a policy and practice of what appear to be unjustified searches when he revealed the following response to students suspected of truancy:

"Generally speaking, we don't handcuff them. We put them in the car. We check the backpack, we check them to be sure there is no weapons, and we put them in our vehicle. On some occasions if we have more than we can fit in the car, we'll take their backpack, we'll take their ID and say 'Okay, we'll meet you over at the school and have them walk there."

If in fact there is an LAPD practice of searching the backpacks of students for simply being late to school or even for intentionally skipping school, then the constitutional rights of students are being violated on a regular basis.

I have repeatedly heard the stance taken by some public officials and LAPD Officers in support of criminalizing truancy and tardiness that every person convicted of a crime was once a truant. The implications of this statement, whether based in reality or not, as a basis for a strategy and approach to youth issues such as education and crime are so serious. To me, the statement is an admission. An admission by LAPD and policy makers that they will affirmatively treat your sons and daughters as potential offenders - just one truant step away from prison where the severe and persistent restriction of privacy rights is legally enforceable. This approach creates what the Campaign refers to as "pre-prison" conditions in our public schools. Criminalizing student conduct, like tardiness and truancy, is a punitive and exclusionary educational practice that nation-wide is contributing to hostile school environments and dramatically poor graduation rates for public school students. In Los Angeles like many cities throughout the U.S., low income students and students of color are disproportionately impacted by punitive educational policies like the truancy tickets and the excessive use of suspensions and expulsions.

I recently ventured back to cases from law school on due process protections for juvenile proceedings. I believe Justice Marshall framed the implications of the presumptive criminalization of youth conduct most articulately when he stated in dissent that:

"Children have the strongest sense of justice - a product of youth, energy, and innocence. Such an inherent sense of justice, however, is fragile and can easily be turned to cynicism, helplessness, disillusionment and disrespect. Not only would such an attitude be contra-rehabilitative, but it could breed dissention and reactionary criminal behavior. A child arrested without valid reason by a seemingly all-powerful and challengeless exercise of police power would instantly intuit the injustice and react accordingly. Even a juvenile who has violated the law but is unfairly arrested will feel deceived and thus resist any rehabilitative efforts."

As the Campaign continues to work with more and more students and families, the immediacy of our objectives to prevent the criminalization of student conduct, including truancy and tardiness, and to end the pre-prison conditions in the public schools, becomes so pronounced. LAMC 45.04, not only provides a legal basis for police contact with young people on an educational issue, we now know that it is serving as a pre-emptive tool for unreasonable searches by the police and the schools.