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Drug war madness - Los Angeles Times
She was a 13-year-old honor student. She may or may not have given her friend prescription-strength ibuprofen, though the girl certainly didn't have any on her. An assistant principal, acting on the word of a scared fellow student, brought the eighth-grade girl into his office and subjected her to a strip search. In the presence of the school nurse and the assistant principal's administrative assistant, this young woman was forced to strip off her clothes including her underwear, exposing first her breasts and then her pubic area, on the erroneous suspicion that she was hiding . . . ibuprofen. At this Arizona middle school, students are prohibited from carrying drugs -- even over-the-counter medication -- into school.
Last month, The Times reported that a panel of judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned (in a 6-5 decision) previous rulings that condoned the actions of the assistant principal, who is now finally considered liable for damages.
The student was searched by women, the nurse and the administrative assistant. It's still abuse. I've been through these searches. Regardless of your gender or that of the people searching you, it's a violation of your rights.
I spent six months in federal prison for civil disobedience a few years ago. What vividly remains far and away the worst part of the experience was being strip-searched. After receiving a visit, I ran the random (sometimes not so random) risk of having to strip off all my clothes, including undergarments -- just in the way this middle-school girl was forced to strip -- and bend over and cough. As a survivor of sexual abuse, these strip searches were particularly traumatic. Given the percentage of incarcerated women who are also survivors of abuse, these strip searches were traumatic for most women. Some guards used their power punitively. Such searches can re-traumatize survivors, and even for women and girls on the outside, sexual abuse and assault are far too common.
Until this recent successful appeal, school officials, supported by not one but two previous sets of judges, had (almost) gotten away with an unfathomable violation. In their zeal to completely eliminate student access to all drugs, in what will forever remain a failed endeavor (we can't keep drugs out of prisons, so how can we keep them out of schools?) that neither teaches our children about fact-based decision-making nor builds trusting relationships with them, those fighting the drug war have unapologetically crossed a very serious line. There is no moral defense for their reprehensible actions. They were not protecting the safety of students. What are we doing to our students by treating them in such a manner? Why are we doing things to 13-year-old girls that appear to be preparing them for prison?
While the Arizona assistant principal might be exposed to a civil liability, it's not nearly enough. Everyone who stood by should be fired for the unconscionable abuse of this student. Everyone who participated in this horrific violation -- including the nurse and the secretary -- deserves nothing short of being expelled from our public schools immediately. They should be nowhere near our children, ever -- let alone responsible for their protection.
Thanks to the drug war, middle-school administrators are behaving like prison guards -- and that scares the hell out of me. It horrifies me that an assistant principal, his administrative assistant, a nurse, five of the 11 judges in this case and two previous sets of judges all thought this act was acceptable.
Is no one -- not even 13-year-old young women and their bodies -- safe from drug war zealots? She was a 13-year-old honor student. She may or may not have given her friend prescription-strength ibuprofen, though the girl certain... more -
Strip-searched juveniles settle lawsuit
Alameda County has agreed to pay $4.3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by youths who said their civil rights were violated when they were strip-searched at Juvenile Hall after family visits and for minor offenses.
Under a settlement approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, $2.8 million has been set aside for the 7,000 claims that are expected to be filed by youths who were strip-searched under certain conditions in the past several years, said the plaintiffs' attorney Mark Merin.
Depending on the circumstances, claimants could get from $300 to $2,500 for each incident, Merin said.
An additional $225,000 will be given to the three named plaintiffs who filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last year. All three said that they were subjected to group strip searches between 2003 and 2005 for misdemeanor offenses.
County officials could not be reached for comment.
Less than a month ago, the supervisors approved a $6.2 million settlement of a federal class-action suit involving illegal strip searches at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, which houses adults. In that suit, filed in January 2006, Daniel Schaffer said he was strip-searched after he was arrested for a traffic warrant.
"We're very pleased that the juvenile authorities have cut out strip-searches," Merin said Thursday. "They're no longer strip-searching kids routinely upon arrival at Juvenile Hall."
Merin said "the most bothersome thing" was the fact that youths were strip-searched - often in groups - immediately after family visits.
"So not only was it a discouragement to visit with your family, knowing this was going to happen afterward, it was particularly embarrassing because they had to expose themselves in front of their peers. I hope the message finally gets through to the penal institutions and Juvenile Hall that they have to be more respectful of their clientele."
The youths who filed suit "did, in fact, view the naked bodies of other juvenile detainees as they were required to expose their body cavities for visual inspection by defendants," the complaint said.
Merin said California law prohibits routinely strip-searching Juvenile Hall or jail inmates between the time of their arrest and their first bail hearing or adult arraignment, if the arrest was for a misdemeanor not involving violence or drugs.
Continued story at the link. Alameda County has agreed to pay $4.3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by youths who said their civil rights were violated when they ... more -
Strip Search of 13-Year-Old for Ibuprofen Ruled Unconstitutional
If you have a problem with school officials strip searching 13-year-olds for Advil – or if you care about the government’s standards for informant use and invasive searches – you can take relief in yesterday’s ruling by a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled 6-5 that students cannot be strip-searched based on the uncorroborated word of another student who is facing disciplinary punishment.
“A reasonable school official, seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a thirteen-year-old girl to a traumatic search to ‘protect’ her from the danger of Advil,” the federal appellate court wrote in today’s opinion. “We reject Safford’s effort to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with the evocative term ‘prescription drugs,’ in a knowing effort to shield an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war against drugs.”
“It does not take a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old girl is an invasion of constitutional rights. More than that: it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity,” the court continued.
In addition to finding the strip search unconstitutional, the court held that the school official who ordered the strip search, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, is financially liable in the case and cannot claim qualified immunity. The ACLU co-represented the student, Savana Redding, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which decided to reconsider the case after a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the strip-search was legal.
For a case like this, it’s hard to understand how the unconstitutionality of strip searching Redding could even be up for debate. Consider how flimsy the government’s case was:
* No physical evidence suggested that Redding – an honor roll student with no history of substance use or abuse – might be in possession of ibuprofen pills or that she was concealing them in her undergarments.
* The strip search was undertaken based solely on the uncorroborated claims of a classmate facing punishment, who was caught with prescription strength ibuprofen – the equivalent of two over-the-counter pills of Advil. (And why on earth might a teenaged girl have ibuprofen?)
* No attempt was made to corroborate the classmate’s accusations among other students or teachers.
* The classmate had not claimed that Redding currently possessed any pills, nor had the classmate given any indication as to where they might be concealed.
* No attempt was made to contact Redding’s parents prior to conducting the strip search.
If you want to get some background information on the abundance of scientific literature describing the serious psychological repercussions of being strip-searched at age 13, you should check out the briefs of support that were also filed by the National Association of Social Workers and the Rutherford Institute.
“The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had,” said Redding in a sworn affidavit following the incident. “I held my head down so that they could not see that I was about to cry.”
As Reason’s Jacob Sullum insightfully observed in his article on the case, “The School Crotch Inspector”:
“There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible … Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.”
The same safeguards and regulations on informant use that we have been advocating in the context of criminal drug proceedings apply even more so to the context of school, where young people are particularly vulnerable to unsubstantiated rumors and finger-pointing by vindictive peers. If you have a problem with school officials strip searching 13-year-olds for Advil – or if you care about the government’s standards f... more -
US school rebuked for ibuprofen strip search
Suspecting that a student had violated a policy against prescription or over-the-counter drugs without permission, public school officials in Safford, Arizona, ordered a search of Savana Redding.
A school nurse had her remove her clothes, including her bra, and shake her underwear to see if Ms Redding was hiding anything.
The 2003 search, prompted by a tip from another girl, did not find ibuprofen, which is found in common medications like Advil and Motrin to treat pain like cramps and headaches. Higher doses require a prescription.
Previous court decisions ruled the school did not violate the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures because officials have a legitimate interest in protecting students from prescription drugs.
The 6-5 ruling by a panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday overturned an earlier decision, setting out its reasoning in an extensive 75-page ruling with many details on the complications of eighth grade life. Suspecting that a student had violated a policy against prescription or over-the-counter drugs without permission, public school offic... more -
Schoolgirls made to strip naked
AT LEAST 16 schoolgirls were made to strip naked by their teachers in eastern India after one student complained she had lost her pocket money.
Officials said the girls in Jharkhand state were taken to a room and strip-searched one by one at the weekend, while teachers looked for the missing money, which was a little over a dollar, Ratan Kumar, a senior police officer said from Dhanbad.
"The order to strip and search the girls was not fair,'' Officer Kumar said.
Many students were crying and begged for mercy, police said. AT LEAST 16 schoolgirls were made to strip naked by their teachers in eastern India after one student complained she had lost her pock... more -
$6.1 Million awarded in McDonald's strip search case
Woah! Its like she won the McDonald's Monopoly game. "Jury awarded $6.1 million Friday to a woman who said she was forced to strip in a McDonald's back office after someone called the restaurant posing as a police officer." Woah! Its like she won the McDonald's Monopoly game. "Jury awarded $6.1 million Friday to a woman who said she was forced ... more
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