Posted on 02/04/2008 7:36:26 AM PST by VRing
CANTON -- Hope Steffey's night began with a call to police for help. It ended with her face down, completely naked and sobbing on a jail cell floor. Steffey says Stark County sheriff's deputies used excessive force and assaulted her during a strip search 15 months ago, according to a federal lawsuit.
(Excerpt) Read more at wkyc.com ...
“I used to be a police officer years ago (in Central Virginia). Frankly, I am disgusted by what I saw on that film. I have seen a change in the people attracted to police work over the years and to honest I am very leery of most police nowadays (and yes, there are certainly exceptions).”
Thank you for your reasonable response and for your years of service to your community. I miss the peace officer mingling in society and have now become leary myself.
Never call the cops until your lawyer is there with you and let him do it.
If the justification put forth by the Sheriff is that she was suicidal, it is legally considered a strip search for weapons or anything else that can do personal bodily harm. The Sheriff’s denial proves the Sheriff dept. is in the wrong.
This Sheriff is going to lose big now that this has hit maybe a million video views today.
Again, if a police department performs a strip search after making a decision a detainee or prisoner is suicidal, it IS a strip search. The fact they didn’t perform a cavity search proves the Sheriff’s department further violated their own procedural safeguards in this situation.
I think the reason that folks distrust the police is that they are the heavies for the city, county, state government where we all live. It does not take a lot of scrutiny to distrust the people who would seek a position in city, county government. We all have local evidence of what our government has become. The police are their heavies. Most of our neighbors will empower them to any extent at the mere mention of “safety” or “children” while the various governments use them like grizzly bears pulling fat salmon out of the river while the salmon spawn. So, distrust is growing, a product of the disconnect between government, federalism run a-muck and officials that live in a totally different world than the productive segment of the population.
What frustrates me and a lot of the productive members of society is that the leeches are protected with the prestige and reputation garnered from the past. I can tell you this, that in Boston 1770’s they were right to warn that we would trade king George separated by an ocean for a local tyranny much harder to combat.
I don’t have all the answers, but we have created a Gordian knot of state, federal and local regulations and enforcers that cannot be untied, only cut. The question is at what time does living under this current system become more onerous and risky than trying cut the knot
If this was my wife, I think I would take all their money then I would get REVENGE!
I agree.
I think the Nazis were more polite and actually knocked first.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers.”
Quote by: Ayn Rand
(1905-1982) Author
Source: “Atlas Shrugged”, Part II, Chapter 3
She is brilliant as always, and it just makes me sad (the human condition that is). If I did not posses a faith in an afterlife I would really despair.
GREAT POST!
I wonder if today's police force hasn't become the "standing army" that had the citizens of Boston freaked out in the first place.
Where was her lawyer during this “encounter” with the local brute squad?
I think that it's just the natural state of Conservatives to distrust people who tell them what to do. And, if you encounter a "bad" (read: unhelpful, dishonest, generally difficult) police officer in the process of him doing his job (pulling you over? responding to your call?) - it's not like you can can say "Heck with this" and try a different cop. Unfortunately, so many Freepers have had one bad experience and paint every cop with the same brush. In truth, I expect better from the people that populate our forum.
I think that this situation raises questions on both sides of the story. Why was the woman arrested? What happened before the cameras started rolling? And... Why were men present at a strip search? Why was the woman left naked in the cell? Why was procedure violated?
These are the questions that the "reporter" should have asked - and didn't. Considering the main source (the plaintiff's lawyer) I'm not surprised.
She didn’t call him before contacting the police. I’ll bet she doesn’t make that mistake again.
Way back in the Dark Ages (ie, the mid 1980s) I did a college term paper on strip search abuses. One case involved a female offender who was arrested by a NYC subway cop, taken to the station and strip searched by the same male cop who arrested her. He also performed a full body cavity search on her. Her crime? Eating a sandwich on the subway. Her age? 16 years old. Anyone need "more information" before deciding if that cop was a scum bag and a pervert who "got off" on both his power AND on the chance to make an attractive woman expose herself not just Playboy style but Hustler style?
Whether the two cops in this case deserve such epithets...I'll hold my judgment till more info comes to light (but with the caveat in my first paragraph). But as for the "They thought she was suicidal!" defense : There was a thoroughly loathsome case posted here a few years back. Female offender brought in ; cops claim she was "threatening suicide", so they restrained her in a chair-ie, she was fastened to the chair with restraints such as hospitals use. Only, the woman had been stripped totally naked first, and she was tied down with her legs spread wide apart-and then she was kept in her cell facing the bars so anyone walking by could look in on her, and she was in the line of a close circuit camera as well. According to the lawsuit the stripped woman brought against the jail, the head jailer was a woman with whom she had a history of conflict...OK, that's a pretty obvious case of abuse of power. But the point I'm trying to make by bringing up that outrageous case is this : If restraints are an option cops can use, why didn't they use restraints on this woman , while keeping her clothed?
No, they're not. Our sherriff's dept. put out a calendar last year that showed the member of the county SWAT time all squatted down with their rifles and gear. Funny thing, though, they all had ski masks on. I wrote them a letter telling them they looked like a bunch of Palestinian terrorists.
Carolyn
I don’t blame the police. In our system of government we get what we ask for. As for bad experiences with the police, nobody would have bad experiences with the police if they were not empowered to do what they do. My guess is that the govt, and the police will close ranks, conduct an internal review and declare that policy was followed. The governed will sort of have a bad taste in their mouth, but will be relieved that policy was followed. End of story. The civil law suit may extract some dollars, or may even be settled out of court. Biz as usual, tomorrow it will be somebody else bulldozed by the system endorsed by most people. But that does not make it right, nor does it make it morraly defensible.
Who knows? Maybe they are pervs or maybe there weren’t enough female deputies on hand to handle a fighter.
Who knows, at least it was not you being held down and stripped.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.