Why Is That Cop's Finger in Your Butt?

[roo_ster]

http://reason.com/archives/2015/05/11/why-is-that-cops-finger-in-your-butt

Last month the Texas House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill that requires police officers to obtain a warrant before probing the anuses and vaginas of motorists during traffic stops. The fact that the bill was deemed necessary speaks volumes about the way the war on drugs has eroded our Fourth Amendment rights and encouraged cops to inflict outrageous indignities on people they suspect of violating pharmacological taboos.

Halla-freaking-luia.  Senate still needs to vote in it.

According to DPS, searches like these are contrary to department policy, but apparently not all troopers got the memo. So you can begin to understand the motivation behind the bill that the Texas House passed last week, which was sponsored by Rep. Harold Dutton Jr. (D-Houston) and still needs approval from the state Senate. Dutton's bill says "a peace officer may not conduct a body cavity search of a person during a traffic stop unless the officer first obtains a search warrant pursuant to this chapter authorizing the body cavity search."

You might think Dutton's bill is redundant, since we already have a Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "unreasonable searches." If these highly invasive, weakly justified searches do not qualify as unreasonable, what would? But while the courts probably would conclude that the searches described by these five women were unconstitutional, it is not hard to see how an overzealous drug warrior might think otherwise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld routine strip searches of arrestees, even people accused of minor offenses such as marijuana possession or failure to wear a seat belt. In those cases the searches, aimed at finding weapons or contraband, took place in jail prior to confinement. But in 2003 the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless inspection of body cavities in other settings as a "search incident to arrest."

The Supreme Court also has indicated that warrantless body cavity searches are permissible near the border as part of the government's drug interdiction efforts.

There would be no need if we immediately transported them back to their country of origin. Let them crap out the contraband back in their dunghill home country.

In 2009 the Court ruled that public school officials went too far when they looked in the underwear of an eighth-grader suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school. But that decision left open the possibility that a strip search might be constitutional in a case involving a drug scarier than Advil if there was reason to believe a student had hidden it under her clothing.

Tar + Feathers + Educrat.  ASAP.

Burrows' bill goes further than Dutton's by requiring a warrant for a body cavity search of anyone detained (but not arrested) by police, whether during a traffic stop or in another context. It also requires that body cavity searches be conducted "in a private, sanitary place…in accordance with medically recognized, hygienic practices"; forces law enforcement agencies to pay medical costs associated with searches regardless of the results; and makes evidence obtained in violation of the new rules inadmissible in court. Sadly, the concern that people forced to undergo such searches will be stuck with the resulting medical bill, even when no contraband turns up, is no more fanciful than the concern that traffic cops will commit sexual assault in the name of enforcing our drug laws.

Nothing I can see to disagree with Burrow's bill, either.

[RevDisk]

While it don't think it should be done to every judge, I think every decision made by SCOTUS should be done to SCOTUS. Private property can be bought for pennies on the dollar for private gain? Nice house, Your Honor, here's a check for $50k. Thumbs up on warrantless probing? Go get the gloves.

Seriously, the Bill of Rights is not that complex and simple human decency should cover everything else.

[wmenorr67]

Wonder how many have gone unreported?

[vaskidmark]

What the haitch-eee-double hockey sticks are non-medical persons doing making intrusive probes of body organs?  Is  that not practicing medicine without a license?  Are there any police agencies that do not have a policy prohibiting that activity and requiring the suspect be taken to a doctor so they can repeatedly be probulated?

Strip/squat/cough is about as intrusive on privacy as I'm willing to go, but it better be in a manner and place that does not expose the person to public view (and that includes cops who are not directly involved in the exercise).

stay safe.

[T.O.M.]

While it don't think it should be done to every judge, I think every decision made by SCOTUS should be done to SCOTUS. Private property can be bought for pennies on the dollar for private gain? Nice house, Your Honor, here's a check for $50k. Thumbs up on warrantless probing? Go get the gloves.

Seriously, the Bill of Rights is not that complex and simple human decency should cover everything else.

Rev, let me personally thank you for not requiring this of everyone who wears a robe for work.   

[lupinus]

Rev, let me personally thank you for not requiring this of everyone who wears a robe for work.   

Why?

"As punishment I hereby order that you be banished to Tahiti, to live out your days in sandals on white sandy beaches, receiving a monthly stipend in lieu of prison costs."

[BlueStarLizzard]

I am kind of amazed that this was even a thing to need a law about. 

I thought the butt/hoo hoo search didn't happen until you had been taken to the jailhouse.

[RevDisk]

Rev, let me personally thank you for not requiring this of everyone who wears a robe for work.   

Overwhelming bulk of judges are fairly low level, and while they do have plenty of discretion (less than some believe, but a lot), at the end of the day, they can be overruled by multiple different levels. Ideally that should keep them generally in check.

Plus, with respect, but if you went off the walls bonkers and ruled that submission to the Flying Spaghetti Monster was mandatory, it's not going to be enforceable outside of a limited area. 99.9% of what you do is applicable only to the people in front of you. Only when you get to the federal circuit court do judges have the chance and power to screw over the entire country.

[Balog]

I am kind of amazed that this was even a thing to need a law about. 

I thought the butt/hoo hoo search didn't happen until you had been taken to the jailhouse.

Stay out of Texas and New Mexico.

[MechAg94]

I never heard of this, but anything that strengthens 4th amendment protections ought to be a good thing. 

[roo_ster]

I am kind of amazed that this was even a thing to need a law about. 

I thought the butt/hoo hoo search didn't happen until you had been taken to the jailhouse.

The final fingering outrage was a female cop on the side of the road probing both poop chute and love tunnel of two gals suspected of hiding wacky tobaccy.  The female cop wore the same gloves for all of this.  Iirc it was on video.

[BlueStarLizzard]

The final fingering outrage was a female cop on the side of the road probing both poop chute and love tunnel of two gals suspected of hiding wacky tobaccy.  The female cop wore the same gloves for all of this.  Iirc it was on video.

Please tell me the cop and the department was sued big time.

[roo_ster]

Female fingering trooper was fired then reinstated.  Texas dps was sued.  Not sure the outcome.  The gals got a ticket for marijuana paraphenalia.

I was right.  It was all on dash cam video to immortalize the womens roadside humiliation.

Are we not all glad for sovereign immunity?

Please tell me the cop and the department was sued big time.

[wmenorr67]

In one case there was a settlement I believe of about $180,000.  It is mentioned in the link.

The one female that got the anal probe instead of the other one, was because she was on her cycle.