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News, analysis, commentary, social trends, culture, politics, government, books, movies, travel, cycling and other stuff
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Facts first, logic always, truth before everything
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In the CHICAGO SUN TIMES:
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WASHINGTON Jailers may perform invasive strip searches on people arrested even for minor offenses, an ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, the conservative majority declaring that security trumps privacy in an often dangerous environment.
In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid.
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Police in New York have an aggressive policy called “stop and frisk”. That program is even spreading to inside private buildings. Here is a clip from an NY Times editorial, with a link below:
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Editorial
Stop and Frisk, Continued
Published: April 2, 2012
The Bloomberg administration and its police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, have been disturbingly dismissive of complaints about the city’s program of stops, frisks and arrests that is ensnaring hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year.
Civil rights lawsuits may now force the administration to examine this policy, which has largely focused on minority neighborhoods and has created anger and distrust among black and Hispanic New Yorkers who feel that the police view them as suspects, not citizens.
The latest suit, filed last week by the New York Civil Liberties Union in federal court on behalf of 13 plaintiffs, focuses on private rental buildings whose owners have given the police permission to patrol the halls. According to the complaint, thousands of residents in buildings enrolled in the Clean Halls program are subject to being stopped and illegally ticketed or arrested for trespassing in their own buildings if they fail to produce identification when they take out the garbage, check the mail, duck out to the store for a quart of milk
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Editorial
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Okay, so now the Supreme Court says you can be “strip searched” by your friendly local police if you are caught not paying a civil fine and wind up in jail with the rest of the “general population”. No big deal? People should obey the law and they won’t have to worry?
No, worry. The ruling came in the case of a man in New Jersey who was arrested by police who believed he hadn’t paid a fine. He was kept in jail for seven long days while the mess was sorted out. During that time, he was moved from one jail to another and subjected to two strip searches. Now, by a five to four vote, the Supreme Court, dominated by Bush I and Bush II and Reagan appointees, says that’s fine, the police have to be very careful because you never know what kind of person is being put into the jail system.
First, everyone should be aware that a strip search is not merely that the jailers order someone to take off their clothes. In the first search, the man says he was ordered to pull up his genitals. The second time, he was ordered to squat while naked. All for a crime that, mind you, he didn’t commit. He thought it was wrong that he was being treated like some sort of murderer and the case went all the way to the top.
New York State recently passed, and the governor signed, a new law giving the police the right to collect DNA from everyone arrested, bar none. The police in New York City have an aggressive policy of stopping and searching people and arresting them for whatever minor crime they might have committed, like cross against a DON’T WALK light. In time, it is possible that a majority of New Yorkers will be involved in the “criminal justice system”. Once there, should they be accused of anything else, both the police and the media will automatically assume they are guilty and should be treated accordingly.
With the near prison like searches going on at airports and these latest measures, we are gradually being surrounded by police and police actions. This, by the way, is just what a lot of police officers and public officials would like. With cameras on every corner and a cop ready to jump and cuff at anything that moves, state and local officials believe crime will be impacted in a major way. That might be true, but it doesn’t improve our society over all to be giving police records, and prison treatment, to half or more of the population. People will have trouble finding jobs and, in many cases, will be traumatized by the whole experience.
As the noose of police intrusion tightens, it is not difficult to imagine that it takes only a few strong pulls to turn us into a full bore police state. There are cameras now in almost every place you can go. Formally public areas, like shopping centers, parks and housing developments, are being turned into large private spaces where many laws and constitutional protections don’t apply. Traffic cameras now ticket thousands and thousands of motorists per day. In Florida, you can be jailed for not having car insurance. In the District of Columbia, leaving your driver’s license at home means jail.
Anyone who thinks that a police state would only come with storm troopers in the streets and a mean old man making announcements on television is wrong. We are, inch by inch, headed in that direction. By giving yet another ultimate power over people, the Supreme Court is taking us closer. This is certain: when you give anyone, especially the police, that kind of power over humans, they will use it and, on many occasions, abuse it. It could be your daughter, your wife or yourself who gets caught up in the creeping police state, because this involves minor violations and even failing to pay a civil fine.
Doug Terry, 4.3.12
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The following is a clip from a commentary by Sherry Colb, professor of law at Cornell University as presented at cnn.com
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No one would deny that U.S. prisons and jails are dangerous places filled with weapons, drugs and other contraband. Achieving security in such institutions is crucial. But that does not mean strip searches are either a necessary or an effective means of doing so. The Supreme Court has an obligation to protect the privacy of inmates by scrutinizing law enforcement policies that concern people who have not even gone to trial for their alleged misdemeanors. The court's failure to do so is an abdication of its responsibilities.
Prison and jail officials have exceedingly difficult jobs and are entitled to flexibility in their efforts to secure the institutions they run. Strip searches, however, are extremely intrusive, humiliating and frequently traumatic, as the Supreme Court has acknowledged. Even in the Supreme Court building itself, where the need for security is undoubtedly great, guards do not strip search members of the public who come to watch oral arguments.
Imagine the fallout if they did.
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While the above commentary is certainly worthy, it is written with the usual caution of someone who has been trained in the law. The concern is not merely over those who go to jail and then are strip searched. The concern is over the larger issue of what we are doing to citizens in a society that is supposed to be based on individual freedom and human rights. Just knowing that you could be treated in such a manner could change the behavior of many people in ways that would not be good for our society. We don’t want people constantly in fear that a police officer could arrest them for a minor offense and then have them subjected to this kind of treatment.
Take someone who is at a demonstration against an increase in college tuition. The right of “peaceable assembly” is recognized in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It is a fundamental human and American right. If a police officer tell someone to move on to a sidewalk and they don’t immediately obey, they could be arrested. If they move on the sidewalk and then say something (anything) to the officer, they could be arrested. (They are usually charged with disorderly conduct and the charges are often dismissed rather than prosecuted.) If everyone is subject to a strip search, the cost of excercizing one’s basic rights gets to be rather high, very quickly.
We can’t have a free and open society where people are constantly afraid. It just won’t work. The loud, the obnoxious, even the disruptive are people who bring major issues to public attention so that, in time, more calm voices can work out solutions to national and local problems. Without dissent, democracy dies slowly and cannot be saved.
Doug Terry, 4.5.12
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