Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: spots on June 16, 2004, 09:40:00 PM
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From an editorial in the Sacramento Bee today:
COSTLY STRIP SEARCHES
Have Deputies Learned the Lesson?
It's both sad and alarming that the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department top brass do not seem to have learned any lesson from the court's recent costly rebuke of the downtown jail's strip-search policy. David Lind, the chief deputy for correctional services, dismissed the complaints that led to a $15 million settlement, the largest in Sacramento County history, as "wild allegations." Most of those arrested, Lind told The Bee, "suffered no more indignity than if they changed clothes in a college dormitory or military barracks."
Really? What college requires students to bend over and spread their cheeks so that uniformed officers can peer into their private parts? What army requires menstruating women to remove their sanitary napkins and stand bleeding in front of naked strangers while deputies ask them to jump up and down, and then make crude jokes?
The recent settlement requires Sacramento County to pay between $1,000 and $3,500 in damages to suspects subjected to humiliating body cavity searches at the downtown jail. Higher amounts will go to those who were menstruating or pregnant at the time of their search or who were the targets of taunts.
Not everybody strip-searched is entitled to damages. The settlement acknowledges that deputies can conduct body cavity searches of suspects arrested for violent crimes, serious felonies and drug offenses, but even those have to be conducted in private.
The women who brought the original lawsuit against Sacramento County had been arrested for refusing to disperse after participating in a peaceful demonstration. They posed no threat to other inmates or to jail staff. To require them to strip in front of deputies and other prisoners was a cruel and calculated humiliation.
That's what makes Lind's outspoken and public contempt for the court's order so alarming. It sends a dangerous message to the deputies he commands. If their superiors don't respect the law and the court's rulings, why should line officers? What should the public expect?
Does Lind speak for Sheriff Lou Blanas? If he does not, Blanas needs to say so. He needs to make it clear to the public and to the deputies he commands that the law and the justice system will be obeyed.
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For those strip-searched in behavior modification facilities, a legal precedent has been set. Check with your lawyer.
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My child was strip searched prior to entry - and nothing was said to us as parents. We were not allowed to see her or tell her good-bye. They took her for what they called "intake" - they said that they would go through her belongings and clothes to see if they were appropriate - but nothing was said about a strip search. While they did this they told her that she was fat.