Court invalidates backpack search by sro

[Tony Perkins]

On August 2,2012, the Washington Supreme court ruled on Washington v. Meneese, which stemmed from February 2009 incident, at Robinswood High School in Bellevue, Wash. SRO Michael fry, of Bellevue Police Department, spotted a student in the restroom holding a bag of marijuana. Fry took the student, Jamar Meneese, to a school officer when he placed him under arrest and handcuffed him. Fry then opened and searched the students LOCKED backpack, which contained an air pistol. Meneese was an adult per Washington law and was convicted in a state trial court of possession of 40 grams of marijuana and carrying a dangerous weapon at school. Menees challenged the weapons violation on the officers alleged lack of probable cause to search his backpack. As a police officer, Fry would have to get a search warrant to search the locked back pack. Fry, used he was a school official an d searched the back pack under the reasonable suspicion standard.

The supreme court sided with Menees and stated the police officer arrested him with police powers and would have to use the same standard to search the backpack, which was locked.

For your information! Stay safe out there!

Tony Perkins

[Trevor Fowler]

I wonder if he just would have arrested the boy for the marijuana and did an inventory of the backpack ( to make sure nothing would be lost durning the arrest) and then found the gun. you have to search personal belongings if you're bringing them to the jail .......right???

[John Cline]

The issue here is that the backpack was locked. As such there was a higher expectation of privacy. The ideal first step would be to attempt to obtain consent to search the backpack, and barring that, the next option would be to obtain a search warrant.

Secondly, we are not school officials, and the common sense standard sictates that when working as a peace officer, the probable cause standard will always apply.