Police Rape

The motivation for this essay was a YouTube post by the Real News in which the host and her guest were discussing how the war on drugs interferes with real police reform. All was going well until the host described the following event which I have quoted verbatim from the DOJ report on the Baltimore Police Department.

In one of these incidents— memorialised in a complaint that the Department sustained—officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight.  Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched.  The woman asked the male officer in charge “I really gotta take all my clothes off?”  The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman.  The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra.  Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity.  This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges.  Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight.  The search occurred in full view of the street, although the supervising male officer claimed he “turned away” and did not watch the woman disrobe.  After the woman filed a complaint, BPD investigators corroborated the woman’s story with testimony from several witnesses and by recovering the female officer’s latex gloves from the search location.  Officers conducted this highly invasive search despite lacking any indication that the woman had committed a criminal offense or possessed concealed contraband.

As part of the discussion, the host described what happened to the woman as "mistreatment" and "disrespectful." At which point I started to write. I have included the entire section on Unconstitutional Strip Searches from the DOJ report at the bottom of this post.

In the title I used the word "rape" which is problematic since the word doesn't not a have a uniform definition that all would agree upon. I have taken a brief section from Wikipedia so that we might establish some common ground.

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration perpetrated against a person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability or is below the legal age of consent.^[1][2][3] The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.^[4]

The key concept for my purposes is "consent." In the case of the woman mentioned in the DOJ report, consent was not given, because she was under coercion by a person who had substantial authority over her. In addition to the authority, the officers involved also had the implicit threat of violence, up to and including lethal violence.

Under these circumstances this woman was raped. It was not a case of mistreatment or disrespect. It was RAPE. She was raped by officers of the Baltimore Police Department and nothing was done.

This shows the extend to which the police, at the local, state and federal levels have become a corrupt force capable of brutal acts of physical and psychological violence against citizens. The police do not act without protection. Governments at all levels have a long history of protecting and even profiting from the criminal conduct of police forces (See DOJ report on the Ferguson Police Department).

The speed at which this DOJ report was brushed aside, plus the shear magnitude of the problem tells us that government (at all levels) have no plans to address this issue seriously. It would seem that American citizens are going to have to learn to live with fascist, authoritarian police forces that are rapidly becoming more like the Stasi and the SAVAK than a police force one would associate with a great democracy.

What the above says about the state of democracy in America, I will leave to you to determine.

If you would like to watch a video discussion of widespread police corruption and potential solutions, I would like to recommend two videos by Tim Black -- Democracy is Dead and Why there is violence in Milwaukee

2. BPD Conducts Unconstitutional Strip Searches   

In addition to impermissible Terry frisks, our investigation found many instances in which BPD officers strip-searched individuals without justification—often in public areas— subjecting them to humiliation and violating the Constitution.  Strip searches are “fairly understood” as “degrading” and, under the Fourth Amendment, are reasonable only in narrow circumstances.  Safford Unified Sch. Dist. #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 375 (2009).  Strip searches are never permissible as part of a pre-arrest weapons frisk.  See Holmes, 376 F.3d at 275 (weapons frisks must be limited to the outer layers of a suspect’s clothing).  Following a lawful arrest, the reasonableness of a strip search turns on “the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.”  Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 559 (1979).  Absent specific facts indicating that an arrestee is concealing a weapon or contraband, officers may not strip search a person incident to arrest for an offense that is not “commonly associated by its very nature with the possession of weapons or contraband.”  Logan v. Shealy, 660 F.2d 1007, 1013 (4th Cir. 1981).  Moreover, courts have “repeatedly emphasized the necessity of conducting a strip search in private.”  Amaechi v. West, 237 F.3d 356, 364 (4th Cir. 2001) (finding strip search unreasonable where it was conducted in public view).  BPD policy likewise recognizes that strip searches should be conducted only “under very limited and controlled circumstances” and that “strip searching . . . [] suspects in public view or on a public thoroughfare is forbidden.”    

 Nevertheless, our investigation found that BPD officers frequently ignore these requirements and strip-search individuals prior to arrest, in public view, or both.  Numerous Baltimore residents interviewed by the Justice Department recounted stories of BPD officers “jumping out” of police vehicles and strip-searching individuals on public streets.  BPD has long been on notice of such allegations:  in the last five years BPD has faced multiple lawsuits and more than 60 complaints alleging unlawful strip searches.  In one of these incidents— memorialized in a complaint that the Department sustained—officers in BPD’s Eastern District publicly strip-searched a woman following a routine traffic stop for a missing headlight.  Officers ordered the woman to exit her vehicle, remove her clothes, and stand on the sidewalk to be searched.  The woman asked the male officer in charge “I really gotta take all my clothes off?”  The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman.  The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra.  Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity.  This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges.  Indeed, the woman received only a repair order for her headlight.  The search occurred in full view of the street, although the supervising male officer claimed he “turned away” and did not watch the woman disrobe.  After the woman filed a complaint, BPD investigators corroborated the woman’s story with testimony from several witnesses and by recovering the female officer’s latex gloves from the search location.  Officers conducted this highly invasive search despite lacking any indication that the woman had committed a criminal offense or possessed concealed contraband.  The male officer who ordered the search received only a “simple reprimand” and an instruction that he could not serve as an officer in charge until he was “properly trained.” An African-American teenager recounted a similar story to Justice Department investigators that involved two public strip searches in the winter of 2016 by the same officer.  According to the teenager, he was stopped in January 2016 while walking on a street near his home by two officers who were looking for the teenager’s older brother, whom the officers suspected of dealing narcotics.  One of the officers pushed the teenager up against a wall and frisked him.  This search did not yield contraband.  The officer then stripped off the teenager’s jacket and sweatshirt and frisked him again in front of his teenage girlfriend.  When this search likewise found no contraband, the officer ordered the teenager to “give your girl your phone, I'm checking you right now.”  The officer then pulled down the teenager’s pants and boxer shorts and strip-searched him in full view of the street and his girlfriend.  The officers’ report of the incident disputes this account, claiming that they did not conduct a strip search and instead recovered narcotics from the teenager during a consensual pat down.  No narcotics were ever produced to the teenager’s public defender, however, and the State’s Attorney’s Office dismissed the drug charges for lack of evidence.  The teenager filed a lengthy complaint with BPD describing the incident and identifying multiple witnesses.  The teenager recounted to us that, shortly after filing the complaint, the same officer approached him near a McDonald’s restaurant in his neighborhood, pushed the teenager against a wall, pulled down his pants, and grabbed his genitals.  The officer filed no charges against the teenager in the second incident, which the teenager believes was done in retaliation for filing a complaint about the first strip search. 

 Other complaints describe similar incidents in which BPD officers conduct public strip searches of individuals who have not been arrested.  For example, in September 2014, a man filed a complaint stating that an officer in the Central District searched him several days in a row, including “undoing his pants” and searching his “hindquarters” on a public street.  When the strip search did not find contraband, the officer told the man to leave the area and warned that the officer would search him again every time he returned.  The man then filed a complaint with Internal Affairs and identified the officer who conducted the strip search by name.  When Internal Affairs investigators pressed the man to provide a detailed description of the officer, the man recalled that the officer “had red patches with sergeant stripes” on his uniform.  The investigator recognized this description as patches worn by the officer in charge of a shift and confirmed that the officer named by the man was working as an officer in charge in the Central District on the dates the man alleged he was strip-searched.  Internal Affairs nonetheless deemed the complaint “not sustained” without further explanation.  

 Deficient oversight and accountability has helped perpetuate BPD’s use of unlawful strip searches.  Although the Department’s policy limits strip searches to specific, narrow circumstances following an arrest, BPD supervisors have failed to ensure that officers comply with this policy and internal affairs officials have not adequately investigated frequent complaints that officers violate it. BPD does not separately categorize or track complaints alleging unlawful strip searches.  But our manual review of BPD’s Internal Affairs database revealed more than 60 such complaints in the last six years—only one of which was sustained.  In response to dozens of other strip search complaints, IA has deemed them “administratively closed,” classified them solely for “administrative tracking,” or found them not sustained – after minimal, if any, investigation.  For example, in 2015 an African American man filed a complaint stating that he was strip-searched by an officer whom BPD eventually fired in 2016 after numerous allegations of misconduct.  The man stated that the officer ordered him out of his vehicle during a traffic stop and searched the vehicle without the man’s consent.  When the stop of the vehicle did not uncover contraband, the officer pulled down the man’s pants and underwear, exposing his genitals on the side of a public street, and then strip-searched him.  The officer seized marijuana and cash during the strip search and allegedly told the man that the officer would return his money and drugs if the man provided information about more serious crimes.  The complaint stated that when the man did not provide this information, the officer arrested him and turned over only part of the confiscated money, keeping more than $500.  Despite the serious charges in this complaint and the officer’s lengthy record of alleged misconduct, IA deemed it “administratively closed” without interviewing the complainant.  This type of inadequate oversight has allowed BPD’s unlawful strip search practice to continue.