Police Dispatched To Inspect Classroom Book After Anonymous Obscenity Complaints
Police in Great Barrington, MA, received an obscenity complaint about a book in an eighth-grade English classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Middle School. Instead of allowing school officials to deal with the complaint, a police officer was dispatched to search the classroom for the book.
This is the first time on record that police officers actually showed up in a classroom over a book. However, calls to the police about children’s books aren’t unheard of. Recently, a “Moms for Liberty” member went to a police station in Florida to report a “felony” because a 17-year-old student checked out a fantasy book at the school library. In 2021, police in Leander, Texas, launched an investigation after multiple parents filed police reports due to school libraries carrying Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.
Unfortunately, as the right-wing book-banning movement continues to gain traction, several states have passed legislation to remove protections for librarians so that they can be held liable and subjected to jail time or fines for distributing supposedly sexually explicit or obscene material to children. The problem is that many conservatives label any book that has an LGBTQ+ character or anything else they disagree with as “obscene,” “pornographic,” and “sexually explicit.”
It’s very concerning how easily a librarian can be criminalized for doing nothing besides providing children’s books. Things are getting even more frightening now that police are showing up at middle schools to root through classrooms in search of books.
Why did the cops show up at a school over a book complaint?
On December 8, a disturbing incident occurred at W. E. B. DuBois Middle School that has parents and free speech advocates deeply concerned. The Great Barrington police received an anonymous complaint about a book in an eighth-grade classroom. The book in question was Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, which was the #1 banned book in America last year. According to the complaint, the book violated the state’s obscenity laws. Police began investigating the complaint but then made a bewildering decision.
A police officer was dispatched to the school and escorted to the English classroom that allegedly had the book. Fortunately, the class had been let out for the day, but the English teacher was still there, and no one had told her that a police officer was coming. The police officer turned on their body cam and searched the classroom, though the book was not found. The incident quickly sparked outrage from parents, teachers, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Parents expressed concern for the “unwarranted” and “unnecessary” police search, as well as fear over how poorly the situation was handled and why a teacher was “blindsided” by police in her classroom.
The ACLU pointed out that complaints like these are supposed to be handled internally. There are no other recorded incidents of police taking matters into their own hands and entering a middle school to search for and remove books. ACLU of Massachusetts’ managing attorney Ruth A. Bourquin stated, “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”
After the outrage, the police department issued a statement apologizing for the mishandling of the situation. It also revealed that due to the lack of criminal activity, the department closed the investigation and referred it to the school district for review. However, they did not explain why a police officer was sent to the school and why this non-criminal complaint wouldn’t have immediately been referred to school officials.
It is not the job of police officers to decide what books to remove from a classroom. Additionally, when something is challenged as “obscene,” it needs to undergo a complicated test to determine if the sexual discussion is of literary or educational value. Someone simply claiming a book is obscene is far from enough evidence to try to remove a book from a classroom forcibly.
It’s already absurd that people are persistently going to the police because of children reading books in school. All of these individuals should face legal consequences for wasting police time and falsely accusing innocent teachers and librarians of giving pornography to children. This is why it’s terrifying that police are seemingly siding with these people.
Book banners are also known to be violent—frequently making death threats and even bomb threats towards libraries, schools, and school officials. So, it’s concerning that some of these people may now be on police forces and showing up at middle schools. It’s not just scary but an obvious infringement on our First Amendment rights when police can dictate what books a teacher has on her classroom shelf.
(featured image: kobzev3179/Getty)
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