Around New England

Great Barrington Gender Queer Saga Continues: ACLU Sends Complaint Letter, Body Camera Footage Shows Thorough Search

December 31, 2023

Repercussions from a police search in a western Massachusetts public school for a sexually explicit book on gender identity are continuing.

On Friday, December 8, a police officer in Great Barrington investigated a complaint that a middle school teacher had shown students an obscene book. The book is called Gender Queer.

On Friday, December 29, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders sent a joint letter to Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue and Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti, claiming the actions of the police officer were “unwarranted and unauthorized by law,” according to The Berkshire Eagle.

Body camera footage obtained by the newspaper from the ACLU shows a plainclothes police officer searching classrooms in the school for Gender Queer, a book rated 18+ by Amazon.

The joint letter from the lawyers criticizing the local police says that the book is not obscene because of its “literary value” and demands Shugrue and Storti “take immediate steps to make clear to your employees, the schools, and the larger community that you recognize law enforcement had no role here and that an incident like this will not happen again.”

Storti apologized for the investigation on Thursday, December 21, eight days before the lawyers’ letter, and has said the department is investigating the matter internally.

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