School librarian recalls ‘surreal’ police visits over books months before new Missouri law

St. Louis Public Radio | By Kate Grumke

Published September 22, 2022 at 4:03 AM CDT

Last fall, at school board meetings across the country, parents who were upset about COVID-19 precautions began to speak out about another grievance — school library books. In the St. Louis region, groups of parents went to board meetings to read aloud passages they said were sexually explicit, calling the books “criminal.”

St. Louis Public Radio has now confirmed they were also calling the police and in one local high school in the Wentzville School District, after receiving angry voicemails, a police officer responded. He went to the library to talk to the librarian about the books in her collection after callers accused her of giving pornography to kids. This happened not once, but twice during the 2021-22 school year.

While the visits did not lead to any action against the librarian or cause any materials to be removed from the collection, the presence of the police officer highlights the potential stakes under Missouri’s new law that makes it a crime to give sexually explicit material to minors. The law is a new tool for parents who want the backing of law enforcement in their fight to force schools to teach what they find appropriate. In the Wentzville district alone, the law has resulted in more than 200 books being pulled from shelves for review.

The encounters between the librarian and the officer also illustrate how police and prosecutors may be ill-equipped or disinclined to respond to complaints about what amounts to a subjective law, and how that means the law’s impact will come down to individual situations.

{snip the rest, including a list of suspect books}