US Authoritarianism

This is tricky. I once was a Norwegian NATO soldier in the Balkans and while we usually was deminers we often was tasked to search for weapons in buildings. Once we searched this cluster of houses close to a combat zone where insurgents were known to operate when we came across what looked like a normal family with male and female adult and a small child of perhaps a year. Our policy was to be the least intrusive we could be, and mother and child stayed inside while we did the kitchen and toiler first and let the man inside. The child was screaming the entire time. After a while our civilian interpreter took us aside and said the was something off with the child. Something in the way they talked about it. It was still screaming like crazy, unconsolable. Our policy was that male soldiers did not search females or children under 16, but by some stroke of luck our company comander was present and his driver/clerk was female. So under our directions with British MP, Ukranian UN Police and mother directly present she carefully stripped the baby and found a cleaning kit for an AK-47 under the clothes. Mother had held the baby in a manner to conceal it. The child was creaming because it was in direct contact with its skin. Mother was under duress to do it it turned out, man was not related and in the end we found equipment and uniforms for a five man squad in the house. It served as some kind of staging area. And a weapon cach including AT in the forest nearby.

Point of this long story.. Searching children is tricky and should only be done carefully after a solid risk assessment