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Safety Law News for June 19, 2024

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— In North Carolina, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina affirmed that a student’s statement to a group of fellow students that he was going to “shoot up the school” was not protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This upheld the adjudication of the offense of Communicating a Threat to Commit Mass Violence on Educational Property, a felony under state law. The case arose out of an incident in which students reported to school officials that they heard a student say, “that he was going to shoot up the school,” and “I will bring the guns.” The court announced the rule of law as one in which “under the First Amendment, the State may not punish an individual for speaking based upon the contents of the message communicated, (but) there are limited exceptions to this principle, as the State is permitted to criminalize certain categories of expression which, by their very nature, lack constitutional value. One such limited exception is when the criminalized speech constitutes a “true threat.” Under this exception, “true threats’ encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protects individuals from the fear of violence and from the disruption that fear engenders, in addition to protecting people from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.” Applying this standard to the dispute, the court held that the student’s statement “was objectively threatening, supporting application of the true threat exception to the free speech protections of the First Amendment.” The appellate court affirmed the adjudication, concluding that, “the student-witnesses in this case did not testify they thought (the student) was joking or that his statement might have been perceived as a joke. To the contrary, the evidence was that (the student) sounded serious. The evidence further demonstrated (the student’s) comment elicited the further comment from a student offering to “bring the guns,” which was overheard by the third student-witness and, itself, caused her alarm….The evidence tended to reflect that, in the context of a school setting, (the student) threatened to conduct a school shooting in a serious tone and students overhearing the threat took it seriously and were scared. Matter of D.R.F.

— In Washington State, “Seattle’s Interim Chief of Police…is advocating for the return of School Resource Officers (SROs), saying they will create a safer environment for students.” In the school year just ended, “69 teenagers have been charged with felony gun offenses.” A prosecutor for King County also confirmed that in recent weeks “we had two children in possession of firearms in two different schools in two different districts, one of which was a firearm with an extended magazine—it was a ghost gun.” The community is taking note of these comments after the fatal lunchtime shooting of a student at a high school on June 6.

— In Nebraska, the board for the Omaha Public Schools is considering a new agreement with the Omaha Police Department that will “increase pay for associate school resource officers by $2 an hour, so each SRO would make $40 an hour during the 2024-25 school year.

— In Tennessee, the Tennessee Governor signed into law House Bill 322, requiring school emergency drills and better collaboration between schools and law enforcement. The new law also, “allocates $230 million for enhanced safety, including $30 million to place school resource officers in every public school, $54 million toward security upgrades for public and private schools, $140 million to place Homeland Security agents in every county to coordinate school security responses, and $8 million to provide new school-based behavioral help staff.”

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Safety Law News for June 17, 2024

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— In Arizona, the Court of Appeals of Arizona affirmed the conviction of a teacher of sexual exploitation of a minor based upon the “evidence found on (his) laptop computer” at school.  The search of the computer occurred when a new teacher took over his classes.  The new teacher “began looking for … lesson plans and assumed the plans were on (his) personal laptop in the classroom.”   Somehow, the new teacher “successfully logged onto the computer (and) searched (the) files for the lesson plans. During the search, they opened a file folder containing sexually explicit pictures of naked children.”  After notifying law enforcement, “the police visited the school. The principal gave (the) laptop to the police. The police secured the laptop and obtained a search warrant based on the information given to them. They then searched the laptop and found pornographic images of children.”  The lower court upheld the search because it was started by “school employees looking for a class curriculum when they discovered the illegal images.”  The police search was valid because “the police could lawfully seize the laptop based on what the co-employees discovered.”  The appellate court ruled that, “the Fourth Amendment protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures (and) applies to a government employer or agent or a government supervisor’s search of their employees’ private property.”  The rule of law applied to such searches is that “a search may fall within an exception to the warrant requirement and be permissible if the search is work-related and reasonable… (and) may be justified if it is necessary for a non-investigatory work-related purpose such as to retrieve a needed file” and reasonable in scope.”  Therefore, “when the police took possession of the laptop, (the) privacy expectation had been compromised… The police did not search the laptop until they obtained a search warrant, so they did not engage in a warrantless search that exceeded the scope of the initial privacy invasion.”  State v. Young

— In Florida, six years after the campus shooting, demolition starts on the Parkland school building where 17 students died. “The school was preserved largely untouched as evidence, first for the gunman’s trial and later for the trial of the school resource officer who was on duty the day of the shooting.”  “A jury acquitted the officer.”  “The gunman…was sentenced to life in prison.”

— In Virginia, “the Superintendent of the Loudoun County Public Schools…recommended against placing School Resource Officers (SROs) in all 62 of the district’s elementary schools…despite adding security to schools being one of the most prominent recommendations of a Blue Ribbon Panel conducted in 2023.”  The Superintendent sees school security officers (SSO’s) as a more prudent choice than armed school resource officers (SRO’s).”

— In North Carolina, officials in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office and the Kernersville Police Department are revising the school safety MOU.  Changes include: (1) “SROs should only get involved in more serious, egregious offenses that occur on campus, or other offenses that rise to some level of a criminal violation;” (2) if an officer sees a fight or other behavioral problem on their own, they still have a duty to act; (3) pepper spray and fogging devices should be deployed as a last resort.

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Safety Law News for June 14, 2024

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— In Louisiana, the Court of Appeal of Louisiana affirmed the liability of school officials and the school board in a case involving the failure to intervene in a student-on-student assault. The incident involved a pattern of sexual assaults in which the victim was injured while riding the school bus “as well as on school property.” The school officials promised to expel the student who committed the assault and not allow him to return to the school, but later allowed him to return and enroll and placed him “in several classes” with the victim.  School officials also promised to assign the perpetrator on a different bus but did not do so.  At trial, the standard was that, “before liability can be imposed upon a school board for failure to adequately supervise the safety of students, there must be proof of negligence in providing supervision and also proof of a causal connection between the lack of supervision and the accident.”  As to supervision, “before a school board can be found to have breached the duty to adequately supervise the safety of students, the risk of unreasonable injury must be foreseeable, constructively or actually known, and preventable if a requisite degree of supervision had been exercised.” The appellate court affirmed liability because, “the trial court applied the appropriate standard of liability… This case involves a sexual assault which occurred numerous times while on a school bus. During this time, the evidence shows that the same offender bullied and assaulted other students as well. The offender admitted to the sexual assault while in the presence of a law enforcement officer and the principal of the middle school. Additionally, (the perpetrator) was allowed to continue at the same school, in the same activities, in the same classes, and on the same school bus with the victim despite numerous assurances to the contrary… The plaintiffs eventually rectified the situation themselves by removing the victim from the school and placing him in private school.”  David Travasos v. Lafayette Parish School Board

— In Kentucky, school officials and law enforcement are ramping up their training of crisis incident responses while students are absent for the summer.  “While school halls are empty of students, school resource officers (SROs) have been… training at East Jessamine Middle School simulating an active shooter scenario.

— In Virginia the superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools “has announced that he will not be putting armed school resource officers into elementary schools and the county sheriff says he isn’t happy about the decision. Mixed opinions are coming from parents and community and members too.”

— In Colorado, officials in the Denver Public Schools are announcing data on weapons confiscated during the school year just ended.  They “found fewer weapons on campus this past school year, data shows.  The district’s chief of safety partly credits the reintroduction of armed school resource officers.”

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Safety Law News for June 10, 2024

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— In New York, the United States District Court held that school officials did not infringe on the First Amendment free speech rights of a student when they disciplined him for an off-campus posting on Snapchat.  The case arose out of an incident when the student, along with three fellow students, mimicked the murder of George Floyd by a police officer with a photo that, “depicts (the student) lying on the ground while his friend …kneels over him.”  The student posted the photo to his Snapchat story with the caption “Cops got another,” where it was visible “to all of his Snapchat friends—approximately 60 to 100 people, including a good amount of students at Livingston Manor High School.”  The court upheld the discipline of suspending the student from school and extracurricular activities, distinguishing the 2021 case of Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B. L. by & through Levy where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the suspension from a junior varsity cheerleading squad of a student based on her use of profanity in an off-campus  social media post violated the First Amendment.  The court stated that, “here, the facts are distinguishable from Mahanoy, in which the Court found no evidence in the record of the sort of ‘substantial disruption’ of a school activity or a threatened harm to the rights of others that might justify the school’s action…the Court finds not only that District personnel reasonably portended a substantial disruption given the response to the photos the same night they were posted, but also that Defendants have established actual disruption based on the events occurring at the school the day after the photo was posted.”  As a result, the First Amendment did not apply because schools have “an interest in maintaining order within its schools, promoting tolerance and respect, and ensuring students feel comfortable and secure within the school environment (and) when the impact of a student’s speech spills into school grounds in a manner so instantaneous and significant, the speech falls outside of the First Amendment’s ordinary protection.”  Leroy v. Livingston Manor Central School District

— In Washington State, a student was killed in a high school shooting in Seattle that is triggering a debate over the decision of the school board to remove campus police from the school district.  The deceased student was attempting to break up a fight.

— In Massachusetts, officials in Marion are deploying a comfort dog for students at a local elementary school.  The canine “will help with de-escalation and provide comfort to children and staff in need who may be experiencing or have experienced trauma.”

— In Kansas, the Kansas legislature introduced House Bill 2641.  Its provisions would require all school districts in the state to prohibit the use of cellphones during school hours.  “Exceptions would be made for educational purposes authorized by a teacher or administrator and to accommodate medical needs, special education commitments and emergency incidents.”

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Safety Law News for June 3, 2024

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— In New York, the Supreme Court, Appellate Division affirmed the conviction of a student of assault in second and third degrees, arising out of incident in which a 19 year old, employed as a custodian, fired a school resource officer’s weapon and shot the officer in foot during physical struggle with officer.  The appellate court, in refusing to suppress statements that the custodian made to the officer while he was in custody ruled that not every comment made by a police officer in response to an inquiry by the defendant can be said to constitute an interrogation.  Volunteered statements are admissible provided the defendant spoke with genuine spontaneity.The court held that this case involves statements made after the police officer intervened while the custodian was on campus armed with a knife and was brandishing it toward himself and others.  When taken into custody, the custodian “spoke with genuine spontaneity and the statements were not the result of inducement, provocation, encouragement or acquiescence, no matter how subtly employed.”  People v. Franco

— In North Carolina, “the Hope Mills police chief and town manager are speaking out after the Cumberland County Sheriff decided to pull resource officers and crossing guards from the town’s public schools, as well as all other towns in Cumberland County.”  The Sheriff’s decision is based on “the sheriff’s staffing concerns for his own department.”

— In Wisconsin, the legislature enacted Assembly Bill 245, requiring “the deployment of 25 police officers in Milwaukee Public Schools.  A group of students are protesting the law, seeking a campus policy compromise that will “have school resource officers stationed somewhere discreetly on campuses but away from classrooms and buildings.”

— In Maryland, officials in the Carroll County’s public schools are announcing that “arrested students almost never face criminal prosecution.”  “When a student arrest is made, the case is referred to the Department of Juvenile Services for intake. DJS determines whether to drop the case, impose consequences, or to refer the case to the State’s Attorney’s Office for criminal charges. A lot of it gets resolved at intake.”

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Safety Law News for May 28, 2024

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— In Ohio, the Court of Appeals of Ohio affirmed the ruling of a trial court that individual school employees were “not entitled to immunity as a matter of law” for injuries to students.  The affirmance involved a case of false identity, in which, two individuals with no official position were allowed onto an elementary school campus for several days.  The school policy, that requires that everyone – including law enforcement – sign in as visitors, was not followed.  “Based upon incorrect assumptions, the employees allowed (the two individuals), …to freely walk the halls …and discipline students.”  “The employees gave (the two individuals), access to students’ confidential information and students themselves with no supervision.”  The police impersonators “disciplined students by handcuffing them and making them do physical exercise. (They) yelled and cursed at students, assaulted students, arrested students, and took students from school property in a private vehicle.”  The appellate court affirmed that Ohio liability law does not apply immunity for “wanton misconduct” and “reckless conduct” by school employees.  “Wanton misconduct is the failure to exercise any care toward those to whom a duty of care is owed in circumstances in which there is great probability that harm will result… reckless conduct is characterized by the conscious disregard of or indifference to a known or obvious risk of harm to another that is unreasonable under the circumstances and is substantially greater than negligent conduct.”  There would be no immunity based upon the facts that “the employees made dangerous assumptions” and “no one questioned (their) repeated presence at (the school) or whether (they) had any authority to discipline students. None of the employees contacted law enforcement to verify (their) employment with either the Akron Police Department or the juvenile detention center.”  M.J. v. Akron City School District

— In Illinois, the Chicago Board of Education is proposing a new school safety policy.  The Whole School Safety plan, “pushes schools to embrace alternatives to traditional disciplinary practices and teach students how to understand their emotions, known as social-emotional learning.”  If enacted each school will be required to (1) Create a Whole School Safety committee made up of parents, teachers, and students; (2) Hire at least one security guard; (3) Create an emergency management plan; (4) Teach social-emotional learning; (5) Implement restorative justice practices; (6) Include training on “climate, trauma-responsive, and social and emotional learning” in professional development plans; (7) Have behavioral health teams, which are supposed to help students who are in crisis, have experienced trauma, or are in need of mental health assistance; (8) Keep all doors locked, except for bathrooms.

— In Virginia, the James City County Police Department” is restarting its Citizens Police Academy.   The academy was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The curriculum of the academy includes department philosophy, uniform patrol, communications, community services, school resource officer unit, SWAT, firearm safety, marine patrol, underwater search and recovery, RADAR, traffic stops, DUI procedures, animal control, crisis negotiations, investigations, polygraph, active shooter training, crime scene investigations and techniques, use of force, officer survival and peer support.  “The program is designed to foster a better understanding between citizens and police through education and communications.”

— In Virginia, the Charlottesville School Board is preparing to vote on a proposal to bring police back to its school campuses.  The proposal, part of a Report by a working group, “would focus on diversion from the criminal justice system and would borrow elements from the world of social work to address student and family needs.”  The new partnership with the police department, endorsed by 60% of the community, will deploy “specially trained officers.”