On what planet would
this be considered even remotely acceptable?
A newly filed federal lawsuit claims that police officers groped
900 students at Worth County High School in Georgia during a warrantless
drug sweep that yielded no results.
The human rights group, Southern Center for Human Rights, filed
the lawsuit on behalf of the students against the Worth County sheriff
over an April 14 incident when 40 officers came into the school with no
advance notice, KTLA-TV reported.
According to the lawsuit, the officers put the school on lockdown for
four hours, during which they ordered students out of the classrooms
and into the hallways. Students were allegedly then forced to stand
spread eagle against the lockers while officers conducted intimate
searches of male and female students, including touching the breast and
genital areas, KTLA reported.
The lawsuit mentions one girl in particular, using only her initials
K.A., who was searched by Deputy Brandi Whiddon. The lawsuit goes into
disturbing detail about how in-depth Whiddon’s search of K.A. was...
No warrant? No immunity. There should be arrests, all right. Those officers are going to cost the taxpayers a lot of money, and they shouldn't be able to shield themselves from the effects of their own negligence by hiding behind their badges.
Worth County School Board attorney Tommy Coleman told CNN affiliate
WALB-TV that authorities had a list of 13 suspects within the school,
but only three of those students were in attendance that day, KTLA
reported.
“The egregious thing that happened was he didn’t search just those
individuals but he searched every single student at the school,” Coleman
told CNN. “There was aggressive searches and touching of undergarments
and breast and genitalia by deputies.”
Every student in the school? If that isn't "unreasonable", I don't know what is.
3 comments:
Oh f():!
I will go with the planning assumption that what is said in this article is somewhat accurate. If it is true, someone blew it big-time. And someone is going to be paying out the ass for the settlements.
From my perspective, if a supervisor ordered almost 1000 students to be searched without any kind of problable cause, I think that person will be looking at a new job at the very least.
Again, call me a bit cynical, but I've learned to hold my judgment until the full details come out. Remember the greatest lie of the 21st-century, "Hands up! Don't shoot!"
You're correct, Mike--I am assuming that the facts as reported at the link are reasonably correct.
For those asking why the principal didn't stop this--on what authority would a school principal tell a law enforcement official *not* to do something like this? He could say no, be arrested for interfering with law enforcement, and the search would continue anyway, without the principal's direct observation of events (which should carry some weight in the upcoming lawsuits).
I could see this as a situation where maybe there was a distinct group of students they may have wanted to search or had some information on. But in doing so would have brought a certain scrutiny as to the particular group chosen, so they just did everyone as to avoid that potentially explosive first scenario. We must be "fair", right?
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