Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem
There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.
It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
“A dog is very loyal. Is she a ....”
Nope, cmon would you call a 5th degree black belt that? In our early days I felt the need to test her but no longer have that need. She really knows how to hit. BTW, this isn’t the wussy liberal kind of black belt.
She is fabulous and I’m not just saying that because she was standing here. She also thinks anyone who would strip search a 13 yr girl for advil deserves to be punished.
When they catch one of IT's gerbils I am sure the screeching is really loud.
You are making your neighborhood very attractive to the authoritarianists!
Call a 5th degree black belt fabulous. You bet. Every time.
Sorry, WE are having fun with IT.
It's Etiquette. You think we are impolite. Cite please? You are fantasizing.
“You are making your neighborhood very attractive to the authoritarianists!”
Probably not, just the other day someone was shooting an actual firearm just a short distance away. Since it wasn’t a cop it wouldn’t be prudent in ITs world.
Honestly I rarely use that word ‘fabulous’, and am not even sure how it was introduced here. perhaps there is a court decision which outlines the exact circumstances. I’m sure a strip search would resolve the issue.
Coulda been a principal or janitor. That’s okay with IT
Especially with a FABULOUS 5th degree black belt .45 wielding sweetheart about willing to defend her honor against authoritarian gerbil loving statists.
It sounds like IT could resolve IT's issue very quickly by trying such. Me, I like breathing. Mrs Jackson doesn't believe in guns. She is a 3rd degree black belt. She gets to the whithering look part and that is enough.
You mean he is not coming back to play? Can we bury the gerbil in the back yard and have a funeral?
Oh man that hurt. I laughed so hard that Mrs. Jackson had to go beyond a whithering look to get me to stop. The scissorkick across the side of the head hurt. This time that screech was me.
What you posted here- sure sounds like something that should have been handled by LEO, and parents- not school officials. School officials should focus on education and not take on other roles that they are not qualified for.
At least you were finished with the Night Train!
What’s Mrs. J have against guns?
What happened to the crickets?
I thought I was going to hear a gerbil scream....
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