Justices Press Attorneys for Guidelines on Halting Truants

In a case closely watched by school officials, especially in Los Angeles, state Supreme Court justices pressed lawyers Tuesday for guidelines that police officers can use when stopping young people they suspect may be truants.

Some justices seemed skeptical of defense lawyers’ arguments that police violate youths’ right to be free from unreasonable searches by questioning them based on appearance alone.

Defense attorneys argued that police must act on more than mere looks and may even need specific descriptions of truants before they can legally stop school-age children.

“What if you have an 8-year-old?” Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird asked at one point, prompting a defense lawyer to acknowledge that police could stop such youngsters briefly to ask why they are not in school.

Harder With Older Teens

Bird and other justices noted that the problem is more complex with older teen-agers. A 19-year-old, who is not required to be in school, may look 16 and would be subject to compulsory education laws.

While defense attorneys argued that police should not be allowed to stop youths based on youthful appearance alone, an Orange County deputy district attorney, William W. Bedsworth, maintained:

“There is a transcendent state interest in the education of children. The state’s interest in the education of its children far outweighs the inconvenience of the individual (who is stopped).”

Police traditionally have been able to stop school-age youths for the limited purpose of determining whether they ought to be in school. If they are truant, the children are generally turned over to school officials.

The case at issue began in 1983 when Newport Beach police officers stopped a youth they believed to be a truant. The youth, identified only as James Edward D., was on the street during school hours but turned out to be a college student and age 17. When he failed to produce identification, police searched him and found a small amount of LSD.

A juvenile court commissioner threw out the case after concluding that police had no reason to conduct the search.

For school and law enforcement officials, the case took on broader implications in December, 1984, when a state appeals court severely restricted police in making truancy stops by declaring that officers could not stop children unless they had specific knowledge that a youth was a truant.

Big-City Districts

That would be particularly difficult in big city school districts, where police would find it impossible to identify specific truants, said Taylor Carey, who spoke on behalf of state schools Supt. Bill Honig and urged that the high court reverse the appeals court.

“Our purpose is not to undercut the 4th Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches),” Carey said. “We are interested in making sure that kids remain in school.

Newport Beach Police Sgt. Fred Heinecke, supervisor of the city’s juvenile section, said that day-watch officers are encouraged to question youths who appear to be truant.

“We believe kids are in the best atmosphere if they are in school,” Heinecke said.

If the youths’ answers are unsatisfactory, police contact the schools or the parents and arrange to return the students to class, he said.

“Officers aren’t stopping and searching them. They contact them because of something else or maybe the kids look like they should be in school. Depending on the kind of answer, the officer may be satisfied or he may check with the school,” he said.

A youngster spotted with a parent during school hours obviously is not a problem but “if it’s someone from the center of Orange County sitting on the beach, that kid should be in school,” he said.

There is no specific truancy program “but the district is happy to have us do it,” Heinecke said.

Heinecke said he believes beach cities tend to have worse truancy problems because the ocean offers “the biggest attraction.”

An official of the Los Angeles Unified School District said Tuesday that a decision by the high court limiting the authority of police officers to detain youngsters they suspect of being truant would probably put an end to the district’s 11-year-old “Operation Stay In School” program.

Under that program, said administrator Ed Davis, the district operates 11 centers that serve as drop-off points for truants picked up on the streets by police officers patrolling in special “school cars” or “juvenile cars.” At the centers, school district officials call the truant’s parents, provide counseling and return the student to his or her school, Davis said.

17,000 Students Processed

During the 1984-85 school year, Davis said, the centers processed about 17,000 of the 579,000 students in the district who are enrolled in kindergarten through 12th-grade classes.

“If the decision of the court is that we . . . have to have information from a reliable source that a specific kid is actually truant on a given day (before an officer can legally detain the youngster), there is no way with our huge school district that we could operate that way,” Davis said.

Davis acknowledged that, on occasion, teen-agers over 18 who are not required to be in school are mistakenly picked up by police. “They become the potential victims in the situation,” Davis said, “but if they have adequate ID, there’s no problem.”

Van de Kamp’s Argument

The case has drawn unusually keen interest from law enforcement and school officials. Besides Honig, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp urged the court to reverse the lower court, maintaining in a friend-of-the-court brief that crime will be curbed if truancy is stopped.

Times staff writers Marcida Dodson in Orange County and Robert W. Stewart in Los Angeles contributed to this story.