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submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

A cop's decision to sport a body camera and search a Massachusetts middle school for a book has raised serious concerns among civil liberties experts, a new report shows.

The Berkshire Eagle reported Wednesday on mounting fears after the Great Barrington plainclothes police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia," Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told the local news outlet. "What are we doing?”

For their part, police say they were obligated to investigate a complaint about the book "Gender Queer" by Maia Kobabe, a memoir about gender identity that contains sexually explicit illustrations and language, the report notes.

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[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Yeah I don't believe it either. The courts have agreed the cops don't have to help anyone.

[-] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, but that's because they don't want to help people. They actively recruit cops who hate the communities they're going to police.

So it's never an issue when they're asked to do harm. That's why they became cops.

this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
479 points (98.6% liked)

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