Lessons on Law Help Teens Find Right Side of It

James Eves and his friends assumed that police often pull over and search carloads of young black men on Orange County streets. So they didn’t protest when it happened to them last year.

Now the 17-year-old student at Foothill High School in Tustin knows they didn’t have to consent automatically to the search because, he says, there was no reasonable suspicion that they had done anything wrong. He learned that during a class on civilians’ rights that Whittier Law School students are teaching at high schools around Southern California.

Through that Street Law program, third-year law student Jill Rizzo teaches Foothill High’s special education students for two hours each week about the legal system and how it affects them. The project started at Georgetown University’s law school about 30 years ago and has since expanded worldwide to about 50 law schools.

Although Street Law classes offered by other law schools are often provided to high school honors students or those involved in mock trial competition, the Whittier program focuses on at-risk students, including those with learning disabilities or previous disciplinary problems.

“Many of them are one step away from jail,” said Stephen Rochford, an attorney who runs Whittier’s Street Law courses. “We want to teach them about their responsibilities and the consequences of their actions to deter them from getting in trouble.”

For James, learning about his rights is as relevant as his lessons in academic subjects.

“The math and stuff is important, but what I learn in this class is what helps me when I’m on the streets,” he said.

The Street Law curriculum covers practical subject matter, including consumer protection and constitutional rights, adapted to a student’s perspective. Students are taught how to successfully handle everyday legal problems, how to both solve and avoid them.

A session on consumer law included information on a person’s rights if a recently purchased stereo is broken, and one on family matters dealt with how to get legally emancipated.

Whittier Law School started participating in the program about three years ago. Rochford trained the nine students teaching Street Law this semester before assigning each to one class at an Orange County or Los Angeles County school, where they will teach until the end of this month.

Rizzo uses interactive lessons such as a true-false quiz to get students participating. During a recent lesson on suspects’ rights, two groups buzzed with debate after statements such as “Police can search a trunk without reasonable suspicion” -- false -- and “Police are allowed to search rooms adjacent to a suspect’s location when arresting that person” -- true.

Rizzo, a wiry 24-year-old in khaki jeans and a white T-shirt, zipped around the room to keep the 11 students in the class engaged.

Her blond hair fell in her face as she pointed a finger at one student to simulate a weapon and later turned to their regular Foothill teacher, Gary Robson, to name him as a potential murder suspect. She then went over theoretical arrest procedures.

Concentrating intently on Rizzo’s statements was 14-year-old Karen Izquierdo, her fingers poised to lift the appropriate answer card for each, one marked “true” and the other “false.” She had decorated her team’s cards with bright red cherries that matched her cardigan and tube top.

“Knowing this stuff means cops can’t take advantage of you because you don’t know what the rules are,” she said. “These are things I’ve always wanted to know about, but it’s not like you can go up to a cop and ask them these things without them thinking you’re planning trouble.”

Student Joe Angulo grunted proudly whenever he provided the right answer to his team.

“Ooh, ooh, who’s the man?” said the 18-year-old at one point. He later proclaimed himself the “master of disaster” when he knew that police, for their own protection against weapons, can search anywhere in a car within a suspect’s reach.

Although he hasn’t gotten in trouble with the police in a couple of years, Angulo said his new knowledge empowers him because he knows exactly what he and the officers have a right to do. So, he added, he is less likely to confront officers about perceived injustices.

“I’m on their level now with the information I have,” he said. “This class really keeps my attention because I’m learning things that are useful.”

Rizzo said the Foothill students have been especially interested in learning about their rights while they are in cars: when they can be pulled over, whether their belongings can be searched, when they must submit to blood tests.

In addition to teaching about their rights if they should get into trouble, Rizzo explains the consequences of crimes to discourage students from getting into trouble in the first place. But rather than being a sort of jailhouse law seminar, the class emphasizes legal literacy and good citizenship.

“I’m not teaching them how to get around the law,” she said. “I’m teaching them about the law and why they should respect it.”

Treading a fine line between being lawyers and teachers, the Whittier students cannot give legal advice. Rizzo told her students the first day that she could not dispense any opinions on real-life circumstances, whether about domestic abuse or a situation such as James experienced in the car with his friends.

Teaching the class also helps the law students learn to communicate complex information to future clients, Rochford said.

“Explaining legal issues to teenagers enhances their own understanding and gives them some perspective on what the average person knows about the law -- which isn’t much,” he said.

The Street Law program gives Rizzo one of her few opportunities as a law student to help others, she said.

“Law school kind of makes people focus only on themselves with all the reading and the papers,” she said. “This is a way to get us out in the community caring about somebody besides ourselves.”