So here are excerpts from the Supreme Court opinion about strip searches in the case called Florence v Board of Chosen Freeholders.
The complaint came from a man who was riding in a car (not even driving) during a traffic stop and arrested when the police computer (erroneously) said the man had failed to appear for a court appearance. He was taken to two jails.
"At the first jail, petitioner, like every incoming detainee, had to shower with a delousing agent and was checked for scars, marks, gang tatoos, and contraband as he disrobed. Petitioner claims he also had to open his mouth, lift his tongue, hold out his arms, turn around, and lift his genitals. At the second jail, petitioner, like other arriving detainees had to remove his clothing while an officer looked for body markings, wounds, and contraband; had an officer look at his ears, nose, mouth, hair, scalp, fingers, hands, arm pits and other body openings; had a mandatory shower; and had his clothes examined. Petitioner claims that he was also required to lift his genitals, turn around and cough while squatting."
Notice, even in the description, certain inclinations of the justices. The petitioner is a "detainee," which is better of course than being a prisoner, I suppose. And notice the use of the word, petitioner "claims" as if there is reason to doubt what he says. After all, he is a guy who has been doing genital lifts. We have to doubt a guy who would stoop to this. He couldn't be a gentleman, if he is willing to talk about it.
The prisoner had nothing done to him that all the other prisoners hadn't had done to them, which is, I infer, supposed to make us all feel better. He was not abused in any special way; he was abused in the same way everyone else taken into these two jails was abused.
During the arguments, the justices made clear their sympathies were not with the man to whom all this was done, but their sympathies were with the jailers, who were, after all, at great risk from harm from the dangerous people they had arrested. Well, maybe the people they had arrested were not dangerous at all, but the jailers had no way to know that and so, full of fear, the jailers were justified in visiting these deprivations onto whomsoever they found under their full control inside the jail.
It has been noted both in this trial and in a similar case heard before this court some years ago, the data on what has been found from people hauled in off the streets suggests it is a very rare thing, maybe once out of a thousand, that anything which might be harmful to the jailers has ever been found. One of the justices suggested this lack of positive findings might suggest the deterrent efficacy of the strip search procedure--after all, any miscreant on the street who knows he or she might be arrested and stripped searched is sure to not hide a gun up his rectum or her vagina.
In fact, there are still knifings in jails and prisons, and still drug use. Stripping prisoners has not made a dent in any of this. That did not seem to matter to the justices, the fact this practice, put in place to protect jailers and prisoners does not, has never been effective. None of that matters. The point is, the jailers say they want to do it. That's all that matters, what the jailers want. That's all our learned justices need to hear.
This is what this nation has come down to, fellow citizens.
This is what the founding fathers so loathed they wrote it into the constitution there would be no unreasonable searches and seizures. They had had experiences with King George III's soldiers and police. But I bet they weren't doing genital lifts in 1776.
No, we have to wait for Justice Scalia and his crowd for treating citizens, innocent citizens, captured on the streets of our nation like Abu Ghraib prisoners.
When George W. Bush spoke to the nation after the photos of Abu Ghraib appeared on the internet, he said, "This is not who we are." He said a few bad apples at the prison had done this; they were the exception in their sadistic behavior.
Well, folks, Judge Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Kennedy have made this exception into who we are.
What is the difference between being jailed in America and being raped? If it happens in jail, it's legal.
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.
Had enough yet?
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