School blocks police from interviewing girl that had been stalked

It all began a week ago when Jose Esteva, a parent liaison at O'Connell, was driving and spotted the girl walking to school - with a man following her in his blue vehicle with his window rolled down, all the while calling out to her.

The girl told Esteva that the stranger wouldn't leave her alone. As Esteva started to take down the man's license plate, the vehicle sped off.

When he got to school, Esteva fired off an e-mail to principal Richard Duber and assistant principal Myra Quadros, telling them what had happened. He also told Officer Joel Babbs, the cop assigned to O'Connell.

As it happened, the stalker matched the description of a man identified in a police bulletin as having tried repeatedly in recent days - both in Daly City and in the nearby Ingleside neighborhood - to coax young girls into a blue pickup truck for sex.

Just then, according to Babbs' police report, the girl herself walked in. Esteva motioned her over to recount what happened.

Before she could get it out, however, Quadros came out of the principal's office and, according to Babbs' report, "told me to stop talking to the student."

Babbs said he needed to complete the interview because "the suspect may still be in the area." The assistant principal shot back that he "could not interview the student because her parent was not present," Babbs said.

Quadros then ordered the tearful girl to go to her class, the officer said.

Babbs called his sergeant at Mission Station, who came to O'Connell to help investigate. By then, however, somebody at the school had given the girl a pass to go home, and the Mission cops couldn't track her down to interview her that day. Investigators with the juvenile division eventually found her and talked to her.

Our calls to both principal Duber and assistant principal Quadros went unreturned.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/12/BA701DD2TK.DTL#ixzz0nkISWpsk

Isn't that interfering with a police investigation?

I understand the right for a parent to be there if the student were a suspect in some crime, but just a witness statement?

I get the part of parents not present. After that... they may be in quite a legal pickle... no, not the kid, the well meaning adults... and I use the well-meaning loosely.

is present. Good rule imo. They should of kept the girl in the office until a parent could be contacted.

And I'm fairly sure it's the law here in California. Police officers are prohibited from questioning students about a crime they may have been involved in without having a parent or lawyer present, or a parents permission. The rules, however, are intended to keep the police from using schools as interrogation centers. They were never intended to prevent students, and especially victims, from giving the police witness statements. There's a legal difference between a police officer questioning a student, and a student voluntarily giving the police a witness statement.

The student was an attempted kidnapping victim, and the assistant principals failure to properly notify law enforcement and permit an investigation is a violation of his Mandatory Reporter status. He commited a crime under state law.

Yet somehow this standard procedure, originally pushed by parents, is something heinous?

This is simply another hit piece on schools, trying to drum up outrage when none is needed.

Oh, and the police did talk with her, even though this "parent liaison" didn't. Good, this little chatterbox of a liaison didn't need to know the details.

Good for the school, they did the right thing.