Judging from this article in the Boston Globe, the parenting situation in Beantown is worse than I could have imagined:
Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.
The program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.
Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.
If officers find a gun, police said, they will not charge the teenager with unlawful gun possession, unless the firearm is linked to a shooting or homicide.
If the police go to these homes, will anyone answer? I ask because it sounds like no one is home. Seriously, why couldn’t the parents simply look in their kids’ rooms? It is their home, after all, and their responsibility.
No surprise that this is happening up in the bluest of the blue states where the government is the solution to every problem.
Some locals are upset about the plan but for all the wrong reasons:
“I just have a queasy feeling anytime the police try to do an end run around the Constitution,” said Thomas Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant who now teaches criminology at Boston University. “The police have restrictions on their authority and ability to conduct searches. 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.”
What you don’t have, Mr. Nolan, is adults willing or able to take responsibility for their own issues’ issues, if you know what I mean.
The program is a response by police to the community’s failure to control its young people, not a constitutional power grab.
Parents, do the rest of us a favor: grab junior’s backpack, go through his underwear drawer, look under his mattress, peek behind the toilet. Do what you have to do to keep him from carrying his piece to school. Be a parent, for Pete’s sake, and stop dragging the cops into places they have no business going.