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.
That depends. Did Savana put the Advil in my personal cavity or hers?
In either case, it's Emergency Room time with the parents and the police. There's health and safety issues involved, plus a gross violation of privacy.
Bobby wants us to become the perfect drug-free police state. NOTHING is too far over the top if it keeps just ONE person in jail for possessing a single joint or, in this case, a single Advil tablet. Bobby is the perfect fascist bootlicker.
Nope. Not unless the 'mo were a pedophile or a pederast as well. Child molestation is not the exclusive realm of homosexuals; there are plenty of heterosexual child molesters as well. And just because one is a homosexual, one is not necessarily a pedophile or pederast.
Interesting that you left out the “uncorroborated accusation” part of my question when you quoted me. Are you okay with acting on anybody’s wild accusations, corroborated or not?
BRAVO sierra. Hyperbole is not going to make your point for you, friend.
So the choices are either strip this little girl down immediately, or do nothing and let the entire school body die from her drug pushing? You're getting a tad ridiculous here, Bob. What happened to investigating the uncorroborated accusation a bit more fully, talking to and observing the accused girl, thereby giving her a chance to explain herself, and why, for example, she was accused of doing what she did, calling her parents and letting them have a say in the proceedings, etc., etc.?
Or are you so steeped in your inflammatory rhetoric that you think only an immediate strip search would have saved society from certain ruin in this instance?
Had she shaken out her bra and out drops Ecstasy or crack, then what? (Reason never would have printed the story, for one. Meaning we never would have heard about it.)
You're trying to minimize the Advil. She distributed a prohibited drug. Period. It's Advil. So?
If you think that should be OK, fine, write it into the school rules that kids can exchange Advil in the hallways along with any other legal drug they want.
But don't come out after the fact and say, "It's only Advil".
Can I pick that person? Can I? Can I? Huh?
Ash, is that you?
In this case, yes. I take it you would not?
She should of gouged their eyes out, threw a chair through the window and escaped these nut cases.
That would have really put this school on the map for what they are.
Why sure, bobby. BUT... if you pick wrong and your manufactured evidence doesn’t stand up, can I give you a long, slow bath in a vat of hot oil?
You take it right. I don't support warrantless search police states.
Maybe it didn't occur to you that already-busted Marissa could have made the wild accusation because she doesn't like honor student Savana and she's protecting her real drug buddy. Maybe a real investigation could have determined the truth before Savana's humiliation.
If Savana were my daughter, I would pummel the pervert who stripped her and anybody who got in my way.
Whoa! It was the school nurse, not Nurse Ratched.
Not that I'm surprised.
No, but they know what they expected to find, if anything---the thing for which they were looking. I seem to remember a certain something about searches in a document I read somewhere . . . you might have read it . . . something about warrants and probable cause, particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Hmm. That would seem to make the sort of fishing expedition you propose here a tad, um, wrong.
The more you stick to this "well, the girl could've been pushing an entire illegal drug pharmacy out of her panties," the crazier you sound. You do realize that, don't you? Only you are making the leap that if she's distributing Advil out of her skivvies, then she's probably dealing Ecstasy out of there as well.
Hey, why stop with strip searches at school? Let's just allow the cops to search any home or car they wish. Never know what they will find.
Sure. You could ignore it. But what if the uncorroborated accusation by druggie Marissa had been that Savana had put Advil in a personal cavity was true? Kids do stupid things, you know.
And what if the package leaked? What if the package contained more than just Advil? What if Savana had died from shock because you didn't want to take any action becaue someone's "feelings" might get hurt?
Hey Bob, why don’t we strip search all the kids as they enter the school each day? That way we can be sure the school is drug free. Who needs that pesky real evidence. We have to be proactive here. It’s the nannystate’s..er..school’s responsibility to force adherence to the rules of Bobby’s world.
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