THE POLICE PROBLEM @lemmy.world Doug Holland @lemmy.world 11mo ago

Bodycam footage inside classroom shows Massachusetts cop saying they could "search every room and ask every teacher" for Gender Queer book

1ft.io Bodycam footage inside classroom shows Great Barrington police officer say they could 'search every room and ask every teacher' for book

Bodycam footage obtained by The Eagle shows a police officer in an eighth grade classroom asking to see a copy of “Gender Queer,” and informing the teacher and school principal

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Why is the police even involved in this. Unless the book in question is banned by law, or at least a court order, then there's no reason for the police to be involved.

This is one more case of the police overstepping their authority.
- If the book is banned by law and this is how the police are triaging what they need to do to fight crime in Massachusetts, I hope the tax payers are getting their pitchforks out.
  
  But police don't fight crime. That's not their job
- This is one more case of the police being police.
  
  Fixed it for u
Fire this dude. This isn't protecting and serving, this is abuse.

Officer Joseph O’Brien.

Ensure we use his name.
- O man, gonna need a date of birth or social or something. Doubt this is the only Joe Obrien on the MA police force.
  
  Luckily the odds are they all deserve to be fired, so don’t need to worry too much
  
  Permanently Deleted
- Pretty sure Protect and Serve was made up for TV.
Cop and chief are wiping their asses with the First Amendment, they are obviously Trumpers trying to own the libs. Losers.
Yeah, and the sexual content in network TV shows is totally fine, but content trying to help adolescents understand their body, and how being different is also normal, must be obscene....

I've never been able to wrap my brain around how these moral crusaders make decisions. Hetero sex and graphic violence is ok? But a biography about growing up gay or trans, with depictions of natural processes and organs, is not?
- They want kids to be obvious to those facts, while also wanting the general public to believe "if kids don't know about sex, they won't have sex". In Hungary, we're already seeing a pretty steep increase in teen pregnancies and abortions, and our "sovereign" overlords likely did it after Republican command.
  
  "If kids don't know about sex, they won't have sex." That's the first verse of the mantra, but it goes on:
  
  If kids don't know about gays, they won't be gay.
  
  If kids don't know about trans, they won't be trans.
  
  If kids don't know about science, they won't be anything but Christians.
  
  If kids don't know about history, they won't be anything but Republicans...
  
  Yeah funny thing about comprehensive sex Ed. It doesn’t just lower teen pregnancy rates, it lowers rates of teen sexual activity as a whole
- Many of these people are strongly against sexual content on TV. It's the deeply ingrained puratinism.
  
  But, they are cool with letting their kids see movies full of graphic violence.
  
  They’re also cool with electing a sexual predator with 3 hooker wives and bangs porn stars. As puritans do.
- It's about control. What they really want is rich white Christo-Catholic men on the top, and everybody else subservient to them
  
  This right here. If you try to treat them like they have a specific better world in mind, you'll only get confused at the contradictions. When you realize there is no right-wing utopia, and they only promise an indefinite system of control, it makes more sense.
- It’s simple, they don’t believe being different is normal or ok. The conservatives want everyone to be cis, straight, and Christian, preferably white as well but if you can’t be that at least be the first three.
  
  Exactly this, except that no conservatives know what 'cis' means.
- the sexual content in network TV shows is totally fine
  
  lol
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_show_controversy#Legal_action
Republicans sure do love creating the nanny/police state that they accused Democrats of wanting to create through… (checks notes) public health measures like temporarily wearing masks to protect against a global pandemic. And Republicans are doing it all over a non-existent problem (or at least their claimed reason for doing it).
- no more "checks notes" please. its one of those dumb trends that does nothing but make you look desperate for using it.
  
  Bit rich saying that when telling people how to talk online makes one look more desperate.
It's strange seeing schools being raided for books
- This is what the beginnings of a fascist dictatorship look like. We're only a few bad elections from it becoming a reality.
  
  This response is so important, a few bad elections locally are leading to these types of interactions. We have paid so much attention to national issues (rightfully) that we missed the LOCAL religious fascists at the door. We are on the verge of some very dark times unless a systemic understanding and change of state and local politics takes place quickly.
- It’s not strange if you paid attention during history lessons about Germany during the time just before WW2
  
  Good point, we should ban those history books as well.
The school is trying to be helpful and do whatever is necessary to molify the cop, which is understandable. However, the school's best bet, once they became aware of the cop's intentions, would have been to whip out their phone cameras, refuse to answer questions, and refer him to the school board's lawyer. What's the cop going to do? He either has to leave and try to get a warrant, or he can double-down on a school-wide search, on camera, and look like an even bigger jackass.

Like everyone else, schools should remember to Shut The Fuck Up (tm).
- Every day is Shut the Fuck Up Friday
  
  But what if the cop keeps asking questions?
So he's a fascist
- As are most cops.
  
  ACAB
  
  The rest are too.
- Must be a Democrat.
  
  It must be humiliating to see conservatives pushing a conservative agenda and have no response to it except "no you".
  
  Have you even thought this through logically, or do you just bleat what you're told to?
  
  If support having police search schools to ensure gender identity is suitably suppressed, you should be proudly taking credit for it as a conservative.
  
  If you don't support it, conservatives have made it clear that this is their agenda and if you don't support it, you're no longer welcome among conservatives.
  
  So what's it going to be? Are you going to openly support current Republican policies, pretend you do, pretend you don't, switch to the party you've been trying to throw your shit at or just not vote?
  
  Is this really the corner you want to back yourself into for shit-tier jabs like "Must be a Democrat"?
on top of doing nazi shit - in the 7 or so minutes he was covering his camera, he only uncovers it for the second or two that the teacher bends over in front of him. what a scum fuck
Neat. history in Real life. Kids .. these are Gestapo. They are going to ensure you think only approved thoughts.
(413) 528-0306 Let them know they have a Nazi problem.
What a free country
To bad there wasn't a School Shooter killing all the kids. Then the cops would have left everyone alone!
A real extensional threat for this guy.
He would be really popular in prison. He'd make a good Fifi, too.
The cop is going about this wrong. The teacher that brought that book in is also wrong. They are wrong to assume the illustrations are appropriate for young children, I’m not talking about the queer aspect, it shows illustrations of oral sex. The teacher should be reprimanded by administrators, if no law was broken, the police shouldn’t be involved.
- This was an eighth grade class room, they've been through sex-ed. Withholding knowledge about how their physical bodies work won't help them, and can create issues of their own. I thumbed through the pages (and you can too) and nothing was terribly pornagraphic.
  
  I’ve read it. It’s designed for at least seniors in high school if not college age. It talks about visiting kink.com among other mature subjects. It’s an interesting exploration of someone who is trying to find themselves, but it isn’t eighth grade material.
  
  Still, there’s no reason to send a cop to hunt it down like this is Farenheit 451.
  
  Get real, “withholding knowledge ” …part of raising a child is understanding when to expose them to information, you do it everyday. This material is probably appropriate for a high school library.
- Any questions any kid has about growing up, certainly including questions about their bodies and sexuality, should be easily answerable from an open shelf at the school library.
  
  This book was brought in by a teacher, it wasn’t in the library. School librarians screen for age appropriate material.

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