Police officers assigned to schools in the region say they go online to check social networking sites and have found evidence of students bullying others, making threats and planning fights.
John Simmons, safety and security coordinator at Miami Valley Career Technology Center in Englewood, said he has personal MySpace and Facebook accounts and that he checks traffic on Yahoo! YouTube, AOL, Instant Messengers and other networks.
His vocational school assigns wireless laptop computers to each of its nearly 2,000 high school-age students.
Simmons, who is also a part-time Clayton police detective, said he has a legal obligation to enforce laws that require the school to ensure computer safety for its students, and to learn whether students are using the equipment for bad behavior or getting access to inappropriate Web sites.
Students who go astray can risk suspension, expulsion or even face charges in courts if the offenses are serious enough, Simmons said.
The article indicates not everyone thinks this kind of policing is the right way to go:
Police need to exercise restraint in developing suspicions on the basis of what is said on social networking sites, said Carrie Davis, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
“Really, what they’re doing is using people’s speech and associations as a basis for suspicion,” Davis said.
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