Traffic stops turned into cavity searches
US police are turning routine searches into full-body cavity and strip searches sometimes without warrants.
Relevant complaints, which have been lodged in Texas, Wisconsin and Kansas in recent months, are alarming civil rights attorneys and advocates.
For instance, two men are currently suing officers in New Mexico for violating their constitutional rights, including the right to be exempt from unreasonable search and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.
According to Joe Kennedy, a lawyer for one of the complainants, �œThey�™re really pushing the envelope on these types of searches of people.”
Kennedy is an Albuquerque lawyer who is representing Timothy Young.
In a complaint filed Friday in a federal court in New Mexico, Young said he was accused of failing to signal while driving and then asked if he was using or carrying drugs when he wanted to fill up his pickup truck some day in October 2012.
He was then forced to strip from the waist down in a public parking lot and then had to let doctors conduct an X-ray and anal penetration at a nearby hospital, under supervision of officers who were searching for contraband. Later, he was discharged after police could not find any contraband in his truck or hidden in his body.
Also in January, police officers stopped David Eckert, another victim, in a Wal-Mart parking lot for not yielding at a stop sign. After they found no drug or contraband on Eckert or in his vehicle, they obtained a warrant for doing a search body.
In a complaint he filed this week, he said that he was then forced to receive an X-ray, CT scan, digital rectal exam, three enemas and a colonoscopy under anesthesia over 12 hours.
�œIt�™s something we�™re quite concerned and often quite horrified at,” said Ezekial Edwards of the American Civil Liberties Union. �œIt�™s hard to imagine when it would ever be appropriate, absent some personal threat of safety to the officer, for a court to allow these kinds of intrusions like anal cavity searches.”
Laws on strip and body cavity searches differ from state to state, but a judge must sign off on a warrant for a cavity search to take place by medical professionals, not police. The practice is usually confined to prison settings.
AT/HJ
Source: Press TV
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/traffic-stops-turned-into-cavity-searches/
