A West Albany High School parent is asking for a new policy on cell phones following an incident last week in which at least three students’ phones were searched for evidence of pornography.

Police and school officials confirmed the incident but said officers did the searching, not administrators, and no phones were searched without the consent of the owners. No pornography was found and no charges filed.

The incident occurred April 29. Parent Blanca Ruckert said she learned of it after friends of her son, a student at West, began contacting him to warn him to delete a nude picture of a fellow West student.

The student, a girl under the age of 18, allegedly had taken a photo of herself at home after school hours and forwarded it to at least one other person’s phone. It was not known how many people received or sent copies of the photo.

Ruckert said her son hadn’t received a copy and was not called in for questioning. But several of his friends were, she said, and she was outraged to learn that their phones had been searched, even by an officer.

“I totally disagree with this school action,” Ruckert wrote in her complaint to Principal Susie Orsborn. “It is a violation of students civil rights to privacy, unreasonable search and seizure and probably even our own state’s wiretapping laws.”

The boys involved may very well have consented, Ruckert said, but she doubts it was willingly. “They were just scared,” she said.

Officer Jed Wilson, West’s school resource officer, said he was at the school when administrators learned of the photo, from a teacher who said she overheard students talking about it. The teacher told an assistant principal because of concerns about possible distribution of child pornography.

Wilson said he talked with three students, two of whom volunteered their phones to show him they were not storing the photo. He asked the third if he could look at his phone and the boy said yes.

Had the students declined to let him see the phones, Wilson said he likely would have asked them why, but nothing further would have happened. A warrant is necessary to search a phone’s contents without consent, he said, and the investigation did not indicate that was necessary.

Wilson said he knows administrators continued to talk with students after he left but does not know if more phones were seen. Jim Haggart, executive assistant to the superintendent, said according to West officials, only Wilson searched the phones.

Ruckert said she has no problem with schools prohibiting phone use during school hours, or with confiscating phones if students break this rule.

However, she said, “I want to see a policy that says when and under what conditions are they authorized to look at text messages or pictures.”

She also wants the incident used to remind teens that any digital image takes on a life of its own as soon as it enters cyberspace, where it remains accessible by anyone for years to come and could be used for criminal purposes.

Wilson, the officer, said he tried to impress a similar message on the boys who reportedly had the photo.

“All the kids that I talked to — I can only assume the district did the same — I told, hey, look, you’re walking a fine line of having some very substantial charges, such as distributing child pornography, coming your way,” he said. “It could go that way very easily with some slight changes to the situation.”