Monday, March 12, 2012

What's a "Reasonable Suspicion"?

Deciding to call the authorities because you suspect a child risks being harmed requires a judgment call about what's a "reasonable suspicion."

For example, our first story involves a four-year-old girl who drew a picture at school of a man with a gun. Does this raise a reasonable suspicion of child mistreatment?  Her teacher in Ontario, Canada, thought so and called the child protective agency.  When her father arrived to pick up his children, he was handcuffed, arrested, and strip searched. However, after searching the family's home, the only gun found was a toy.

Or, do you have reasonable suspicion of a child predator if you see an older white man wearing a camouflage jacket and blue jeans standing at a school bus stop? After one mom in a Philadelphia suburb approached the man offering help, he walked away without saying anything — so she called the police. The police notified the school, children were kept in their classrooms during recess, and an email alert was sent to parents asking them to call 911 immediately if they saw this "suspicious" person. It turns out that the man was a new resident of the community and, instead of being welcomed with a plate of cookies, he was questioned by police about why he was standing at a school bus stop.

The third story involves a text message about a Georgia school that was sent by an unknown sender: "gunman be at west hall today." Does this raise a reasonable suspicion of a planned school shooting? After law enforcement learned of the text message, they told school officials to go into lockdown. It turned out that the sender was all thumbs: the auto correct feature on the sender's cellphone had changed "gunna" to "gunman," and the corrected message was accidentally sent to the wrong number. The fact that this happened three days after a school shooting in Ohio helps explain the concern.

Finally, what about a four-year-old girl who was punished by rubbing her mouth until her lips swelled? Even though the abuse was reported to the police in the summer of 2011, the first prosecutor to review the girl's case decided that her mother's boyfriend hadn't violated North Dakota's corporal punishment law. The police continued their investigation, finding that the girl also had bruises on her face and neck which she said happened when she slipped in the shower. Also, the mother's boyfriend first told investigators that the girl injured herself while riding her bike, and then later admitted that he had rubbed her face because she wet the bed. The second prosecutor who reviewed the case charged the boyfriend with felony child abuse, punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

So, when deciding if you've got "reasonable suspicion," ask yourself:
"Would someone with average judgment, who saw or heard what I did, also be suspicious?"
If so, it's reasonable. And while you may not always be right, when you are, a child may be saved from harm.

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