Boston To Start Home-To-Home Searches For Guns In High-Crime Areas
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.
In the next two weeks, 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.
There are constitutional questions here, of course. Allah at Hot Air does a good job reviewing those. What bothers me is the intimidation factor, and the attitude on display from authorities here.
For better or worse, having cops show up on your doorstep asking to come in and search your home is a scary experience. How many people are going to be bullied into letting the cops in? What are the chances of the cops leaving you alone if you won’t let them in? After all, if you won’t let them search, you must be guilty of something right? And how clear is it going to be to some citizens that it is their right to say “no” to this sort of thing? If they came to my door, I’d say “no” on general principles.
Plus, why are the cops seizing guns that haven’t been used to commit any sort of crime? I understand that Boston, and undoubtedly the state of Massachusetts too, has restrictions on what sort of guns a citizen can own (whether those restrictions are constitutional or not is the subject for another post), but I fail to see why that gives cops license to want to search homes where they suspect such guns may exist? And are they just going to be seizing banned guns, or all guns in the home? The article isn’t real clear, but it seems the attitude from the cops is “all guns are bad.” Which isn’t true, obviously.
Overall what we have here is cops paying visits to private homes and asking to search them not because they believe there’s evidence in them relating to a crime that’s been committed but rather because they feel some of the denizens of these homes might commit a crime. And that’s a pretty dangerous thing to let happen as it starts us down a road I don’t think any of us want to travel.












