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Home of searched, land of seized
(by Dave Lange - May 20, 2010)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Home of searched, land of seized
Maybe there's more to the story than is being told in the lawsuit recently filed against the Chardon Board of Education and School Superintendent Joseph Bergant II. But based on what a Hambden Township mother claims in the suit she filed on behalf of her two sons, school officials look mighty heavy-handed. And they aren't saying anything in their defense, based on the usual advice given by attorneys to civil litigants.
According to the lawsuit, the two boys first were suspended from school and later were expelled because of marijuana. There's no mention of them selling marijuana in school, that they were in possession of marijuana in school or that they even had marijuana on school property. It would be difficult for the school board to prove that the boys were high on marijuana in school. If there were any indication that written school policy regarding drug use on school premises had been violated, suspensions and expulsions might be justified.
But based on the available public information regarding this case, suspected marijuana was confiscated by officers of the Chardon Police Department from the boys' car while it was parked on property owned by the City of Chardon, not the school district. The city-owned parking lot where the two boys and their car were situated, in violation of a posted sign designating it for use by city employees only, just happens to be located across the street from Chardon High School.
The gist of the lawsuit is that Chardon school officials did not have the right to deny these two young citizens their right to a public education as punishment for something that did not occur on school property.
Unfortunately, this apparent infringement on American's rights is just another extension of the government's trillion-dollar obsession with controlled substances, especially marijuana. Drugs are the biggest reason why the Fourth Amendment "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" has become so expendable.
When the two brothers were confronted for the heinous crime of using in an off-limits municipal lot, the reasonable response by police would have been a firm directive to move their vehicle or the issuance of a parking citation. But because of activist court rulings that encourage police-state tactics, officers conducted a search of their "effects" without a warrant.
The courts somehow have deduced over the years that people do not have a right to be secure in their vehicles. It's hard to imagine the founding fathers putting up with government searches of citizens' saddle bags or the interiors of their buggies for tying their horses up to restricted hitches. But back in those days, law enforcers weren't hung up on hemp either.
Nowadays, police are prone to stop any vehicle driven by people of suspicious races or ages for any violation, real or imagined, for the explicit purpose of searching it for drugs. They proceed to conduct those searches based on the "plain view" rule, if something illegal is plainly visible, for probable cause, if they smell marijuana or observe peculiar behavior, or if they can intimidate the driver into granting permission. And if they don't get permission, that's suspicious in and of itself.
So America, which used to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, has become the home of the searched and the land of the seized.
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