Parents at Bessemer City Middle School say their children were inappropriately frisked while lined up in the cafeteria earlier this week, touched between and under their breasts and on their hips as a school resource officer searched for cell phones during the school day. Bessemer police have since confirmed they are investigating the incident and have moved the officer off her middle-school assignment while the probe continues.
Shanayah Mosley said her 14-year-old daughter was among roughly two dozen students searched on Monday after the school principal instructed students to line up in the cafeteria. As reported by WVTM 13, Mosley said the school resource officer touched students between and under their breasts and on their hips during the search. Another parent, Antania Brewster, said her daughter felt ashamed and unsure about what had happened to her.
Bessemer City Schools confirmed the incident occurred during Monday's lunch period and said students were alleged to possess vaping pens and cell phones during the school day, violations the district says fall under Alabama's new FOCUS Act. The district acknowledged the school resource officer was alleged to have touched students inappropriately during the search and said it is now conducting interviews and investigating the matter, adding that student safety remains its top priority.
A Law Meant to Limit Screens, Not Search Bodies
Alabama's Freeing Our Classrooms of Unnecessary Screens for Safety Act, signed by Governor Kay Ivey in May 2025, imposed a statewide bell-to-bell ban on personal electronic devices in public K-12 schools starting with the 2025-2026 school year, according to the Office of the Governor of Alabama. Model district policies adopted under the law, including those in Jefferson County Schools, define banned devices broadly, covering cellphones, smartwatches, tablets, wireless earbuds and gaming devices throughout the entire instructional day, including lunch.
Alabama is one of at least 17 states plus Washington, D.C. that have now enacted statewide statutory restrictions or bell-to-bell bans on student smartphone use, part of a broader national push toward phone-free classrooms. The law addresses device restrictions, while the method used at Bessemer City Middle School has raised separate legal questions.
Mother Questions Why a Wand or Metal Detector Wasn't Used
Mosley said students already pass through a metal detector to enter the building each day, and she noted the school resource officer had access to a security wand that could have been used instead of physical contact. She questioned why a hands-on search was necessary at all, saying there was no just cause or identified threat that would justify a frisk, and argued that the officer could not invasively search children in that way as either a sworn officer or a district employee.
Those concerns track with established constitutional limits on student searches. Under the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court precedent in New Jersey v. T.L.O., school officials may search a student's belongings without a warrant only if they have individualized reasonable suspicion tied to that specific student, according to the United States Courts. And in the 2009 case Safford Unified School District v. Redding, the Supreme Court went further, ruling that invasive physical searches require specific evidence of a distinct safety danger or hidden contraband, striking down a strip search of a 13-year-old suspected only of carrying over-the-counter medication, per Oyez.
Where School Policing Groups Draw the Line
The National Association of School Resource Officers, headquartered in nearby Hoover, Alabama, maintains an official position that school resource officers should not be involved in routine administrative student discipline, such as enforcing phone or dress code rules, which the group says remains the sole responsibility of school administrators. The organization has separately testified in support of bell-to-bell phone bans in principle and discussed locking devices away, according to testimony filed with the Maine State Legislature.
Guidance compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum recommends that memorandums of understanding between police departments and school districts prohibit school resource officers from involvement in routine discipline. Such agreements address the relationship between school districts and police departments.
Parents Push for Accountability at the District Office
Brewster and Mosley sought answers directly from Bessemer City Middle School principal Dominique Moore. Moore told the mothers the district would discuss their concerns in more detail at the district office on Wednesday. Several parents have since filed police reports over the search.
Bessemer police have confirmed they are investigating the incident and have moved the school resource officer from her middle-school assignment for the duration of that investigation. Bessemer City Schools has not announced the outcome of its own internal interviews, and it remains unclear whether the search was directed by school administrators or carried out independently by the officer.
