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Common Offenses Committed By Students

(The content below was transcribed from an interview done with Acacia Law. We think you'll find it much easier
and more enjoyable to read this way.)

Interviewer: Okay. Let’s talk about juveniles, in the high school students, what are the most common crimes that they commit that you run across?

Acacia Law: Most of the crimes that I run across have to deal with predominately alcohol or drug use of some sort whether it be possession of marijuana or drugs, whether it be consumption of alcohol charge they call MIC or minor in consumption. A lot of other ones that I see involve theft. Basically, I have seen people charged, and when I say charged I didn’t use that term sort of out its formal context, but basically if you’re being alleged as delinquent, in my opinion, you’re essentially being charged even though technically it’s not a crime.

I’ve seen people charged in high school for using someone else’s cafeteria ticket to buy food from. Most major schools, and I mean not just the ones that throughout the whole state, in major schools this includes Tucson were you might have anything from the H Charter High School or Canyon Rose Academy, the city high school, East Point High School, Edge High School, Tucson Preparatory School.

All those different schools what happens is that there’s a lot of police officers who are basically assigned to the high schools and make probable cause findings and then file a complaint against the student whether it be for either juvenile delinquency or an adult crime. I have had kids threatened with, were actually filed and then resubmitted a Class 4 theft felony in adult court when their only like 15 or 16, which is turned down by the state and brought to the juvenile court because, obviously, the consequences for the minor are very serious.

Interviewer: Listen, in High School now you’re saying not all high school, but in a lot of high schools, there is police right in the mix with teachers and principals that are out there looking to find probable cause of kids that are maybe doing innocent things, but charging them with serious crimes.

Acacia Law: Yes. Basically what I’ve run into and what I experienced is that they’ll have one police officer basically permanently assigned to a specific high school. The universities, Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern A of U, they basically have their own university police forces which have the same authority essentially as any law enforcement officer in the state except their jurisdiction is strictly on the college campuses.

However, again, they are legitimate and they have the right and have, in fact, charged college students with felonies and I have had in the high schools all of these different police officers who get complaints about kids and investigate them and if they find probable cause or even reasonable suspicion will investigate the matter, there is usually one per high school, and they will probably spend every day charging somebody with something.

Interviewer: That’s crazy.

Acacia Law: Things that when I was again in high school simply were not considered anything that would be anything more than a simple school disciplinary matter. I’ve had to, I was going to say, I meant to say earlier besides the two courts, I’ve had to and I have appeared with students both at colleges as well as high schools at hearings to either keep them in school, keep them from getting a school disciplinary record or to simply go in front of a supervisor or hearing officer to present reasons as to why, in this particular case, a person a student a minor charged or accused of violating school regulations is either not responsible or should not be given a permanent record on account of the behavior. All these things add up over time. Bottom line is I think today that kids have three strikes against them in terms of things that for example would have been considered something that the school would give you detention for, a day’s suspension for, or three-day suspension now can be charged as felonies in the state of Arizona and are, in fact, [inaudible 29:32].

Interviewer: Yeah, I remember that being in school and having to write I will not do this bad behavior 100 times. Now it seems like, yeah, you do anything in school and now they want to charge you with a crime. That’s kind of the atmosphere. Right?

Acacia Law: Yeah. If you can picture it, I mean, I’ve had to represent kids who’ve borrowed somebody else’s lunch card, the parent of the kid who owned the lunch card was upset about the amount the kid spent that month, so they went ahead and basically called out the wrong kid about it, and their kid got scared and said that the other person used their card without their permission so that they wouldn’t get in trouble with their parents.

Now I have a kid who is charged with a Class 4 felony theft, fraudulent use of false identification or fraudulent or taking identity of another in order to commit theft, or shoplifting, for example. It’s stupid but its cafeterias or stores on campus or is part of the high school. If I stole an ice cream sandwich as a kid in high school I might get detention. Now, I’d be looking at probably some sort of criminal charge, probably a misdemeanor, but if you’re 15, 16 or 17 you don’t want to start out your career with an adult charge before you even get out of high school.

A lot of parents, again, they’re glad they came here because otherwise they were just ready to throw in the towel. They just assume that you had to simply go along with whatever was said as opposed to work something out or force the state to prove their case. But all those things that we took for granted you can’t take for granted anymore. And with the sophistication associated with computers and their ability to track it’s not a question of moving your kid to another state or another county or another high school and to think that they’re going to be able to slip under the wire. They won’t.

Interviewer: I’m getting a picture now of why it’s so important to deal with an attorney because you’re there for them on the criminal side. You’re there for them on the juvenile side, if there is one. You’re there for them in regards to probation, possibly dealing with CPS invading the home with all kinds of crazy requirements. You’re also there with the school itself, the school disciplinary items. You’re there for all aspects of it. That’s what it sounds like to me. Right?

Acacia Law: Exactly. I mean I’ve had cases where we’ve been fighting on three or four fronts simultaneously. I’ve won, but I mean it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of stress. But the thing is its worth it because the bottom line is, as I said, you just never know when you might get in trouble in the future or you know wrongfully accused. If you have a juvenile record that’s gonna be taken into consideration if you get in trouble down the road as an adult. Again this whole concept of sealing records is only true to a certain extent. You can’t hide behind the sealing of your juvenile record in order to not have a judge consider that in terms of determining what’s appropriate to do with you now that you’re an adult. So, there’s a lot at stake.

Interviewer: Yeah, there’s a lot at stake. Is it a cultural myth that 'Oh, they’re just a kid. They’re just being a kid or they’re a juvenile. It’s not a big deal.' I mean, I bet you that’s the thought process of most people until they run head on into these problems.

Acacia Law: Yes. One of the things you have here is, obviously, drinking or consuming alcohol and being under 21 is a crime, period. That is a municipal code that is statutory law. It’s a crime and essentially what happens is that most parents I don’t think realize when a child is, even in juvenile court, if they’re caught with marijuana or with a marijuana pipe or any sort of drugs, pain killers, any sort of prescription drugs that are not in their names, as we went through our we went into this when we did an interview talking about the different parameters of drug cases, but the bottom line is all those cases are actually technically felonies even just the possession of the pot pipe.

From a juvenile court’s stand point even though they can only find you guilty of delinquency these superior court judges usually are on rotation, they know that it’s a Class 6 felony in this state. They know that most of the judges that are in the juvenile courts, the superior court judges, are in fact what they all are, are on rotation.

They’ve likely been adult court criminal judges as well as adult court civil judges as well as some of them have also been adult court family court judges. They look at things differently, they may not, you may have a kid in front of them, but if they’ve been adult court they may just see you as just trouble waiting to happen given the fact that they have seen so many juvenile histories unsealed giving sentencings in adult court that if you don’t clean up the way your that your client is presented to them you could be in for a world of hurt.

Interviewer: Because they’ll have the preconceived notion that these people will just turn into adult offenders so I better stop them now.

Acacia Law: Exactly. Even, again, we were talking about some of the obscenity or sex crimes in minors, and luring of minors, and the cyberspace crimes essentially, well, those are considered some of the most serious crimes in the state of Arizona and some of the harshest penalties. If a judge in juvenile court has one of those cases in front of them, and that’s assuming the state is kind enough not to bring it to adult court, that person is exposed to a lot of possible ramifications that are severe, so is the whole family.