Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Approves Strip Searches For Any Arrestable Offense
sl4shd0rk writes "Taking a page out of the TSA handbook, the Supreme Court has voted to allow strip searches for any offense, no matter how minimal. The article cites these two tidbits from Justice Anthony Kennedy: 'Every detainee who will be admitted to the general [jail or prison] population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,' and 'Maintaining safety and order at detention centers requires the expertise of correctional officials.'"
We have gone insane in the United States. Our constitution is consistantly being ignored, and our freedoms are dwindling. This is just one more example.
RTFA:
Again displaying their infinite law-and-order wisdom, the US Supreme Court has ruled that anyone arrested for any offense, however innocuous, can be strip-searched, even if there's no suspicion that they are concealing contraband.
He wasn't convicted.
Florence ... was arrested when his wife was pulled over for speeding (he was a passenger, and his son was in the back seat), and a check of his record showed an unpaid fine for an earlier offense. That record-check was wrong – the fine had been paid – but Florence spent a week in jail anyway, where he underwent the two strip searches.
He didn't commit any crime.
The ABA also notes that Albert Florence, who brought the original suit, was stripped-searched twice, once in private when "the supervising officer inspected Mr. Florence's mouth, tongue, armpits, buttocks, and genitals," and a second time when "he was forced to strip off his clothes in a shower area with a group of four other prisoners, all of whom were required to open their mouths, lift their genitals, and 'squat and cough' in plain sight of one another."
He was publicly humiliated.
Stop apologizing for the complete and total gutting of our rights.
Yes and no.
By itself, Jaywalking isn't an arrestable offense.
But let's say you didn't pay a parking ticket, so a warrant was issued for your arrest. Or let's go further and say you did pay the ticket, but they forgot to cancel the warrant, or let's say that your name is the same as someone else who has a warrant. Then it's get naked!
Or let's say you're protesting the horrible treatment of the 99% and the police decide to single you out to be beaten, pepper sprayed, beaten some more, zip-tied so tight that your hands turn blue and you suffer permanent nerve damage, and then they beat you some more, and then take you to jail and strip you naked.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Right, because beating you, pepper spraying you, zip tieing you so tight your hands turn blue, then beating you some more isn't enough. Now they can give you a full cavity search as well.
All for exercising your first amendments rights.
Way to go America. Land of the .... free?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
You just found the loophole. It is an old police tactic for roughing up people who have done nothing wrong. The law is written in such a way that you can be arrested and released without charge and nothing happens to the officer, but pointing out that you did nothing illegal is, in and of itself, an arrest-able offense that will stand.
So yes, if you are standing around doing nothing a police officer can come up and say ' you are under arrest' and bring you in... they can then not charge you with anything which means you can go. If you say 'I am not doing anything, what am I being arrested for' you can then be arrested for resisting arrest and even though there is no original charge you can be charged for the resistance, which pretty much comes down to 'didn't show officer respect they felt they deserved'.
It is because of patterns like this that the police in the US are generally best avoided unless you are the one who called them. Too unpredictable, too many ways around the laws, and too many people willing to protect them against non-police.
any police officer can take you and have you strip searched for any reason whatsoever (let's say you're arrested for resisting arrest)
Actually resisting arrest is a relatively serious crime. The guy in the case was arrested because someone else driving his car had previously gotten a traffic ticket. The ticket had been paid and the man had a letter from the court stating that it had been paid. So he was arrested for the crime of being a citizen in good standing with the law. Then he was strip searched twice once while with several other prisoners. Both occasions involved the visual inspection of his genitals and anus.
So the Supreme Court ruled that it is perfectly reasonable to arrest someone for absolutely no reason hold her for a few days and repeatedly sexually humiliate her. I use the pronoun "her" in this case to get you thinking about how you would feel if it were your wife or daughter though it should bother you just as much if it were your son. Imagine that your 19 year old daughter had gotten a speeding ticket, paid it a bit late, but paid it in full, and was carrying proof, was then forcibly taken into custody for a few days and required to spread her legs and hold open her vagina while an officer shined a flashlight inside while several others stood around, then repeat for her anus; and again before going to court where the judge orders her released on her own recognizance. This is what the Supreme Court ruled in favor of.
I will say this now. Cops will abuse this (hell they have doing this for years only then sometimes they would get sued). If they don't like you they are now allowed to sexually assault you repeatedly. This ruling was vague enough that cops will probably push the boundaries (they always do) and begin using penetrating cavity searches.
I hope it happens to each of these justices kids and grandkids.
-- QED
I live in socialist Continental Europe where a friend of mine was arrested after beating the stuffing out of someone who refused to leave his house. The police took him to the station, offered him coffee, and politely interviewed him. He then spend the weekend in jail, where he had regular smoke breaks, cable TV, and three squares. No strip searches, pepper spray, zip ties, or mancho police BS. Can you guess how often people are stabbed in jail here? Or how often guards are attacked?
This argument that having someone fondle your ballsack is for your own protection is exactly the kind of nonsensical, fear-based thinking that allowed a whole country to blithely accept penning protesters in "free speech zones," indefinite detentions without evidence or trial, and submitting to having naked photos taken in order to board an airplane. Police are supposed to protect the peace--they are public servants--and in many parts of the world, they reciprocate respect, instead of demanding it through dehumanizing displays of power.
This case has nothing to do with protecting guards, or keeping people from running with scissors in a jail cell--that is what eyeballs, ears, and cameras are for. What the SCOTUS said was that your fourth amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure ends when a police officer decides to arrest you. The guy in TFA was arrested because the cop thought that he hadn't paid a fine--despite having documentation that stated otherwise. He was then strip searched not once, but twice, before spending a week in jail. For allegedly not paying a fine. That he had in fact paid.
This decision is a further erosion of the Bill of Rights, plain and simple. The government needs a court order to obtain a search warrant before entering your house, but can enter your anus for loitering--or damn near anything because a copy can always find an excuse to arrest someone. Worse, it has a chilling effect, because now protestors know that, after being pepper-sprayed and zip-tied, they will be strip-searched multiple times.
Let's see what the amendement says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The SCOTUS has decreed that the whim of a single police officer, for any reason he or she deems worthy of arresting you, rises to the level of probable cause sufficient to violate the security of your person against unreasonable searches--unless your consider peeking inside someone's vagina or under their penis for participating in a peaceful protest reasonable. And, as anyone from a small town can attest to, cops can find any excuse to arrest you at any time, and face zero repercussions for flagrantly abusing that power; they don't even have to charge you with a crime. Slippery slope? Try free-fall.
Humor me for a second. Imagine a cop in a foul mood and who needs to fill quotas for traffic tickets, so he's pulling people over for just about anything. Now imagine that your wife is driving you home and she is pulled over by this cop. He runs her license, and asks for your ID--which you're not obliged to provide, but you don't want to start any trouble. He runs your ID and finds out that you have an unpaid parking ticket and that there is a warrant out for your arrest. Fortunately you have a receipt showing that you paid the fine, but the cop isn't buying it because the computer says otherwise. And you're black, so that probably isn't helping. The next thing you know, you're naked in a room full of strangers, spreading your ass cheeks apart while a stranger with a badge takes a good long look at your taint. Now imagine that this happens a second time, because they decide to move you from one jail to another during the entire week that you spend in jail. You're already in custody, but hey, "they've been doing it for decades now," and it's better safe than sorry.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.