It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
BOSTON - Boston police will ask parents in high-crime areas to let detectives search their children's bedrooms for guns without warrants in a new anti-crime program.
Police believe parents are so worried their teenagers will be caught up in gun violence that they'll be willing to allow police into their homes. If the parents say no, the police will leave.
Davis announced the program Friday in a meeting with community leaders.
During the next two weeks, teams of three plainclothes officers assigned to schools will go to homes where they believe teens have guns and ask their parents or legal guardians for permission to search.
The program, called Safe Homes, has raised questions about civil liberties.
Thomas Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant who teaches criminology at Boston University, called it "an end run around the Constitution."
"The police have restrictions on their authority and ability to conduct searches," he said. "The Constitution was written with a very specific intent, and that was to keep the law out of private homes unless there is a written document signed by a judge and based on probable cause. Here, you don't have that."