New school danger
Just in time for the back-toschool season, a recent ruling by the state’s highest court stands to render Massachusetts schools considerably less safe in the days ahead.
The 5-2 decision by the Supreme Judicial Court found that a police officer called to Milton High School by school officials to investigate a “suspicious person” at the school lacked “a reasonable belief that the defendant was armed and dangerous” before conducting a pat down.
That pat down of 19-year-old Jonathan Villagran yielded a loaded gun, a bag of marijuana and $3,000 in cash. All of which caused the school to be put into lockdown and 20 Milton police officers to be called to the scene.
But to the court’s majority that’s apparently just a big overreaction to a guy who first lied to school officials about being a student and lied a second time about meeting a girl there, whose name he didn’t remember. The fact that he reeked of marijuana — which the SJC has previously ruled is no longer a reason for suspicion — and alcohol also made school officials more than a little nervous.
So they did what they thought was the right thing and called in the police.
Writing for the court’s majority, newly retired Justice Geraldine Hines insisted, “Our ruling does not bear on what school officials themselves can and should do to ensure the safety of students... nor does our ruling handicap school officials in responding to behavior that presents a potential or real threat to student safety.”
And yet that’s exactly what it does — by essentially discouraging school officials from calling in the police when they believe students are being threatened.
In his dissent Justice David Lowy, joined by Justice Elspeth Cypher, cited recent mass killings at Newtown, Conn., and Virginia Tech.
“The government has a vital interest in ensuring the safety of our schools and the children who attend them,” Lowy wrote.
“Even without specific facts to suggest that he was armed, the location, the timing and the suspicious nature of the defendant’s conduct, and his potential intoxication warranted the officer’s concern for the safety of students at the school,” he added.
Often when the court does something as dangerously nutty as this, there’s a legislative remedy. That is not the case this time. It appears the only remedy seems to be school officials taking on an increasingly problematic and dangerous role for which they will have to be better equipped.