Confiscation of cellphones in public schools School started today. I'm just reading the code of conduct about cell phone usage. It states that on first violation of the policy the device will be confiscated and held until a parent (me) comes to pick it up. Fine by me. It goes on to say that any subsequent violations will result in confiscation until the end of the school year and the school will not even return the device to me, the rightful owner and the child's parent. For the first infraction, confiscated electronic equipment will only be returned to the student's parent. If an item is confiscated a second time, it will be held until the end of the school year. No Exceptions! I should note that I'm being asked to sign a paper saying I agree to these terms. I'm not planning on signing this paper. By choosing not to opt in to these terms, does the school still have the right to deny me my property until the end of the school year if it is confiscated a second time?
You cannot be compelled to sign a form indicating that you agree to something. However, your lack of agreement does not override a policy that they have authority to set. There is a contractual way that this could work out for them, depending on what exactly the document is. To be a contract, the parties must agree to the terms voluntarily, and if you do not agree to the terms, there is no contract. A 10 year old child cannot be bound to a contract, anyhow, so the child's consent is legally irrelevant, though strategically a good idea in the sense of alerting the child to their obligation. To be a contract, both sides must offer something that they are not already obligated to provide. What is the school offering? On the school's side, they might claim "We offer an education", but as a public school, they already have that obligation. Schools have broad authority to impose rules in order to operate, so in lieu of a successful lawsuit that the district overstepped their authority and violated someone's constitutional rights, the school could have a policy prohibiting use of a cell phone in school. Paired with such a policy, they can grant conditional permission, subject to the parent (and symbolically, the child) agreeing to certain terms. Since they are not obligated to allow cell phones at all, they are offering something of value to you, and you have a contract. The cell phone owner could try suing the school for keeping the phone, but the suit would fail because there was a breach of the contract. A strategy probably not worth pursuing is arguing that the confiscation clause is unconscionable (which would void the contract, which entitles the child to have a cell phone at school). Confiscating the phone is not theft, since the intent is not to permanently deprive the owner of their property (just as it is not theft when you have to leave guns or recording devices at the security desk). If a student were to take a forbidden thing without the owner's authorization (such as a gun, or a phone) and it was then confiscated, the rightful owner might be able to sue the school – as long as their hands are clear (if they had no knowledge that the thing was taken and used in an unauthorized manner). In this case, the parent clearly knows and authorizes.
To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.
It's called police and prosecutorial discretion to discern when to arrest and prosecute; and that situation in particular is also the result of a decision of the jury of the court of public opinion. Permits are required to sell on the street in Oakland. But not everyone who sells has a permit, and not everyone who is confronted about not having a permit is arrested and prosecuted. There are simply too many potential cases to prosecute. And, the police officer has the discretion to ticket or not. When you get pulled over while driving or riding a bike, you don't always get a ticket, since the officer has the option of discretion. When the officer responded and found an eight year-old selling water, he obviously was aware of the fact that it was a violation. But he was also aware of the court of public opinion. What is it going to look like if he arrests an eight year old and their parent? Allison Ettel was right, in a purely legal sense, to make the report. And technically, the child (and adult) needed a permit. And could have been ticketed and prosecuted. But it was Ettel was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, and she lost her case. Happens a lot.
The nature of the meeting matters: I assume this is a private meeting, not a public meeting. Under RCW 9.73.030, you have to announce that the meeting is being recorded (the announcement must itself be recorded), or the recording device must be obvious. There is no exception regarding property status (such as &quot;on school property; in a government-funded facility&quot;). But it also matters if the conversation is &quot;private&quot;. See State v. Townsend, 57 P.3d 255, which gives weight to the subjective intent of the parties, thus the primary question would be whether the school official intended the communication to be private. Given strong FERPA privacy protection of personal information about students and in light of the likely nature of the conversation, one might think that the administrator intends the discussion to be private. However, the administrator cannot discuss e.g. disciplinary issues with third parties, so that would not be a valid basis for expecting privacy. You would really need to get a lawyer, discuss the expected subjects with the lawyer, and see if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy (even if this is not a public meeting). Your local ACLU chapter might advise you of your rights, though they would probably also advise you to not experiment with breaking the law (I don't see what legitimate purpose would be served by recording in secret).
This is a good question, which I am going to answer from a practical perspective, rather than a theoretical one, which would probably justify a law review article (applications of the takings clause to criminal justice fact patterns is actually one of my pet areas of legal scholarship, but a lot of it calls for dramatic changes in established practice and precedents reached from other perspectives, making it impractical to pursue in real life). I recently had a case along these lines in my office where my client's property was seized as evidence in a criminal case against a third-party. The crime involved a gun shop where all of the guns that were in the possession of the shop owner for repairs at the time of the bust (i.e. as bailments), including ours worth several thousand dollars in addition to having some sentimental value, were seized as evidence of charges against a shop owner who was fencing stolen goods, making sales to felons off the books, falsifying excise tax returns, etc. He seemed legitimate and had been in business for many years in what was not a fly by night operation. He had all of the proper licenses. Who knew we were dealing with a crook? In that case, we intervened on behalf of our client in the primary case to seek the physical return of the property (basically a replevin claim), as have others affected by the bust. It took a few months and some legal fees, but we prevailed without too much effort, as have the other intervenors. Generally speaking, to make a 5th Amendment claim, you would have to show a total taking and move into some legal gray areas in this context, while it is usually hard for authorities to show a continuing need for possession of third-party property in the face of a demand for its return, especially when photography and other scientific tools can document the evidence in great detail these days. In that case, showing that our client's particular gun was not involved in any illegitimate transaction also simultaneously made it less important as evidence, although that would not necessarily be true in general in these kinds of situations. There is a pending case in Colorado posing similar issues, where a suburban police department essentially destroyed a guy's home in order to catch a felon with no relation to the homeowner whatsoever, who had fled into it and taken refuge there. But, that case, as far as I know, has not yet been resolved on the merits.
There are two issues, one is the legal issue of whether what you are doing is a crime, and the other is the evidentiary issue of proving that that is what happened. If you take the phone home with the intention of keeping it ('finders keepers') then you have committed larceny (sometimes called 'theft', sometimes correctly). This specific type is called 'larceny by finding'. If you take the phone home with the intention of finding the owner then you have not committed larceny because you have not committed the mental element ('mens rea') of the offence: you don't intend to permanently deprive the owner of their rights. However, and this is the evidentiary issue, if hypothetically you were found in possession of the phone then the police might not believe your explanation and a court might well convict you of larceny. P.S. Firefox has marked 'evidentiary' as a spelling error and suggested 'penitentiary' instead. :s
First of all, you own the mobile phone, you do not own the software on it - you have a licence to that software that almost certainly includes terms allowing Samsung to change the software and/or revoke your license. Second, changing the software does not destroy the phone - the hardware is completely intact. You can present that hardware and, in exchange, receive a brand new working phone which has the added advantage that it won't spontaneously explode. Alternatively, if you are an idiot, you can install a non-Samsung OS and cause your bomb, sorry, phone, to work again. Third, Samsung is probably not liable for any consequences that flow from an inability to make phone calls in any event - their contract will almost certainly exclude it and a case in negligence would probably fail for lack of both a duty of care and/or lack of foreseeability. Alternatively, Samsung is aware of a real risk to the users of their phone and have gone to great lengths to get them back. Having reached a 93% return rate they have identified a way to make the remaining 7% completely harmless. It is arguable that if they can do this and don't, then they are being negligent.
A teacher could not instruct students in how to build explosives for use in Federal crimes: It shall be unlawful for any person to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction [...] with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence (source) This Federal statute creates a law preventing the teaching (in any context, including schools) of bombmaking for the purpose of committing a federal crime. So &quot;bombmaking&quot; is one subject that cannot be taught, although I don't think that there have been any prosecutions of regular K12 teachers under this law.