Classroom searched by police after anonymous complaint about an “obscene” LGBTQ+ book

An anonymous complaint about a frequently banned LGBTQ+ book reportedly led local police to search a Massachusetts classroom for “obscene” and “pornographic” material. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has blasted the incident.

“Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia,” Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, told The Berkshire Eagle this week. “What are we doing?”

Related:

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Great Barrington Police Department and the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office opened a probe into whether Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer contains pornographic material after someone called on December 8 to complain that the book was available in an eighth-grade classroom at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.

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Police notified Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon of the investigation, and after school let out on December 8, Principal Miles Wheat escorted a plainclothes officer to the classroom to search for the book. The English teacher was reportedly present during the search but had not been told that an officer would be coming to search their classroom. The officer recorded the search using a body camera but did not find the book.

Following the incident, District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said that Great Barrington Police were no longer investigating the matter. “The complaint that was filed did not involve criminal activity, therefore, the Great Barrington Police Department and our office have closed the matter and referred any further action back to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District,” he said in a statement. “The superintendent assured the District Attorney’s Office that the issue will be reviewed according to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s policies and shall remain as a school department matter.”

But teachers, parents, and students in the community were outraged by the incident. More than 100 students at nearby Monument Mountain Regional High School staged a walkout in protest. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) released a statement in support of the walkout, stating that “Book banning has no place” in the state.

In a Facebook post, the teacher whose classroom was searched wrote, “How on earth is a cop more qualified to decide what books are OK to be in an educational setting for teens?”

According to The Berkshire Eagle, police said they had a duty to investigate the complaint about Gender Queer. But Bourquin said that the ACLU of Massachusetts is “very troubled by this notion.”

“They say anytime someone could call they have an obligation to go marching into places wearing a body cam, and you know, interrogating people,” Bourquin said, adding that state laws are “pretty clear about police not having roles in this situation.” Obscenity laws, she explained, have been “carefully crafted to ensure not tromping on constitutional free speech rights.”

Bourquin told the paper that the ACLU has requested the officer’s body camera footage and other records related to the investigation.

Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, explained that obscenity laws test whether a book has value beyond sexual arousal. That “very specific” requirement is not necessarily something the average person or police officer might understand.

Silverman said that he’s concerned about the precedent the Great Barrington Police may have set amid the national rise in book bans primarily targeting books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors. “While it might be rare now, it doesn’t mean that it will be rare in the future,” Silverman said. “I think the school and the police department have to come forth with a policy to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”

In a statement, the Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee and Superintendent Peter Dillion apologized for the incident.

“The recent incident at the middle school has challenged and impacted our community,” the statement read. “Faced with an unprecedented police investigation of what should be a purely educational issue, we tried our best to serve the interests of students, families, teachers, and staff. In hindsight, we would have approached that moment differently. We are sorry. We can do better to refine and support our existing policies. We are committed to supporting all our students, particularly vulnerable populations.”