County investigating Milwaukee police strip searches 7 officers, supervisor are targets of John Doe

[midnight]

Milwaukee County prosecutors have launched a secret John Doe investigation to determine whether seven Milwaukee police officers and a supervisor broke the law while conducting strip searches in District 5, sources confirmed Monday.

The complaints - which Chief Edward Flynn acknowledged go back a couple of years - include allegations that officers sexually assaulted people and violated their civil rights while conducting rectal searches for drugs on the street.

The department did not begin its investigation until last week, when internal affairs picked up a pattern, according to Flynn.

The seven officers and Sgt. Jason Mucha, all of District 5, have been stripped of their badges and guns and reassigned to desk duty in different districts while the investigation is pending, according to police sources.

A John Doe investigation is a secret inquiry in which prosecutors can compel testimony and subpoena records and other documents without public knowledge.http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/county-investigating-milwaukee-police-strip-searches-j94ob8q-144319495.html


I wonder how this will go, because yesterday, the Supreme Court signed off on all strip searches:http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/02/supreme-court-signs-off-on-strip-searches-for-all-arrestees/

[sybylla]

1. But a strip search that becomes a sexual assault is another thing completely.

The Supreme Court can't possibly have meant that anything goes with their ruling.

[midnight]

2. I'm not going to say that the courts are saying anything goes, but the courts are saying

strip searching for anything goes....

[dragonlady]

3. The Supreme Court did NOT approve all strip searches

The decision is “a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy,” to quote Justice Breyer, but let's not make it worse than it actually is. From the New York Times (emphasis added):

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

The procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.

The federal appeals courts had been split on the question, though most of them prohibited strip-searches unless they were based on a reasonable suspicion that contraband was present. The Supreme Court did not say that strip-searches of every new arrestee were required; it ruled, rather, that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches did not forbid them.

Daron Hall, the president of the American Correctional Association and sheriff of Davidson County, Tenn., said the association welcomed the flexibility offered by the decision. The association’s current standards discourage blanket strip-search policies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html

[midnight]

4. Dragon Lady it's the majority's opinion that is supporting the strip searches...

"In its opinion (PDF), the court’s majority suggested that strip searches would make inmate populations safer by helping to stem the tide of drugs and weapons, and healthier by identifying early on inmates with injuries or infectious diseases."

"Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority that Florence’s detention at the Burlington County Detention Center and the Essex County Correctional Facility “struck a reasonable balance between inmate privacy and the needs of the institutions” — which is to say, the court believes that inmates are entitled to virtually no right to privacy when that challenges the more pressing safety issues presented by managing a prison population."

[dragonlady]

5. The holding of the opinion is narrower than their suggestions

The question before them was whether this kind of search of this person before admitting him to the jail was permitted under the Constitution. The majority ruled that it was. However, they did not reach the question of whether the police could do that kind of search anywhere else (like out on the street) and certainly did not order that such searches must be carried out in jail.

[midnight]

6. The strip search authorization seems to be coming from DOJ.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/the_obama_doj_and_strip_searches/singleton/

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that in the interest of security, prisons could conduct visual body cavity searches of all detainees after they had contact with outsiders. For years after that ruling, lower courts ruled that the prison had to have a reasonable suspicion that the arrestee was concealing contraband before subjecting him to a strip search upon entering the facility.

But in recent years, some courts have begun to allow a blanket policy to strip search all arrestees.

The Obama administration is siding with the prisons in the case and urging the court to allow a blanket policy for all inmates set to enter the general prison population.

“When you have a rule that treats everyone the same,” Justice Department lawyer Nicole A. Saharsky argued, “you don’t have folks that are singled out. You don’t have any security gaps.”