police misconduct

[colleen white]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? maryland. A few months a police officer came to my fifteen yr old son's school, during lacrosse practice to question him about an incident of kids going into an abandoned house in our neighborhood, spray painting graffiti on the walls and trashing the place with beer cans and trash. My son told the truth and said yes he was one of the boys that did go in the house. The next day at school, the lacrosse coach kicked him off the team,my son called me from school hysterical that he was off the team. later that afternoon the athletic director called and said that they had "jumped the gun" and that my son was still on the team and that this incident was not on school property. The police officer came to our home that night to discuss with my husband and I , our son's involvement with the abandoned house. No charges were ever filed. Just today my son heard through a friend that this same officer had told this friend's mother (who happens to be a prominent figure in the community) that her son should probably not hang around my son and proceeded to fill her in with all the details of the case with the abandoned home( She had not heard of this incident until now) My son was very ashamed of his behavior and had never been in any trouble before or after this one incident. My question: Isn't this unethical behavior of a police officer? Is it slander or defamation of a minor child?

 

[The Occultist]

Slander is a form of defamation, and for anything to be defamation it must be untrue, which is obviously not the case here.

Incidents such as these are public information, so, from a legal standpoint, the officer may tell anybody he pleases unless there are special circumstances that would prevent this (from you story, your son's situation isn't one of those special circumstances). It's possible that the officer's agency does have it's own policy in regards to this, so the only thing you can do is issue a personnel complaint against the officer.