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Maybe after you nice police officers find my kids' guns you can get them to clean up their rooms, too. That's not too far a stretch in Boston, where gun crimes involving young people have forced an unusual prevention strategy. Boston police will ask parents in high-crime areas to let detectives search their children's bedrooms for guns without warrants as part of a new anti-crime program. Officials say that they believe parents are so worried their teenagers will be caught up in gun violence that they'll be willing to allow police into their homes.
If the parents say no, the police will leave. "They don't know what to do when faced with the problem of dealing with a teenage boy in possession of a firearm," Commissioner Edward Davis told the Associated Press. "We're giving them an option in that case." Over a two-week period, teams of three plainclothes officers assigned to schools will go to homes where they believe teens have guns and ask their parents or legal guardians for permission to search for weapons.
Some see the program as a creative way to deal with the rising rates of violent crime among Boston's young people. But to others, including some law enforcement professionals, the program called "Safe Homes" has raised questions about civil liberties. Thomas Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant who teaches criminology at Boston University, called it "an end run around the Constitution." "The police have restrictions on their authority and ability to conduct searches," he told the AP.
"The Constitution was written with a very specific intent and that was to keep the law out of private homes unless there is a written document signed by a judge and based on probable cause. Here, you don't have that," he said. Some of those who oppose the initiative say people may be too intimidated to say no to police.
"People might not understand the implications of weapons being tested or any contraband being found," Amy Reichbach, with the American Civil Liberties Union, told reporters. The program is modeled after one that began in 1994 in St. Louis and ended in 1999, partly because funding ran out. Boston police said that in the first year of the St. Louis program, police were allowed into 98 percent of homes contacted and that guns were seized in about half of those residences.
Commissioner Davis said officers would not conduct searches in the homes of teenagers suspected in shootings or homicides that investigators are trying to prosecute. If officers find drugs during a warrantless search, it will be up to them whether to make an arrest, he said. The Rev. Jeffrey Brown, a co-founder of the anti-crime Boston TenPoint Coalition, backed the initiative.
"What I like about this program is it really is a tool to empower the parent," he said. "It's a way they can get ahold of the household and say, ‘I don't want that in my house,'" Brown said. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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