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.
No child (male or female) should be subjected to this kind of molestation. If it were my child, it would be on Bill O’Reilley, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Lou Dobbs, (I almost said Ann Coulter). I would get the best attorneys this country had to offer, and figure out how to pay them later.
And you want to run away from your own arguments, which you couldn't support. Imagine that.
What law required her presence?
[crickets]
Was there any permission given by the parents to strip this child?
Who stripped her?
[crickets]
You can post to me all you want & I really don't care.
You needs facts? All that matters is how you feel.
Well, I had a great night’s sleep but DANG!!!! I hate missing all the fun. You guys are great.
Another zot for another strip search supported?
Tell me,.... how well do you know bobby?
Ooops. Sorry about the freepmail. It’s too early and I hit the wrong button. So here we go again......
I don’t think we’re talking about ANYBODY behind their backs.
Who stripped her?
[crickets]
Facts? We've got the facts. The problem is that you don't feel or think. The issue is quite self-evident and all decent people are revolted by this incident. We are even more revolted that someone on a forum that stands for a belief in decency, morality, and the constraints on government power prescribed by the US constitution would think that strip searching (yes she was sripped, and she was searched, and this was done by employees of a government under color of authority) a teenage girl, in search of an Advil, is about as immoral an act as man or woman can commit. The only thing needed to complete the act of terror is black boots, a monacle and a riding crop with which the act of non-molestating examiation could be performed at a "safe" remove.
In short, you are a disgusting revolting dirty old man. And since you chose to call me out, give me your address and we can meet in your street at High Noon and settle this like gentlemen.
Invented, sourceless ones don't count.
In short, you are a disgusting revolting dirty old man.
They're your fantasies, not mine.
The decision you cited stated that the fact that the search was conducted in the presence of other made it per se unresonable. In reaching YOUR conclusion that because this search was conducted only by employees, it was therefore reasonable is to commit the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
We only wonder what kind of person would attempt to strain fact and logic to justify something so morally reprehensible.
I know it is all about the Advil.
I am talking about the facts as related in the appellate court decision. They are damning enough to you, your cause, the administration of the school and the so-called justices who ruled in favor of this grotesque act.
Employees of the state acting under color of authority stripped her. We got that. We all got that. The problem is your morally dwarfed mind cannot wrap itself around all of that fact.
Unreasonable doesn't equal "child molestation".
Your "logic" is as poor as your spurious "facts".
From the actual case:
Redding was not physically touched in any way during the search, and she was not asked to remove her bra or underwear.Poor you.
Which refute your fantasy.
Whether or not the acts in this case rise to the level of molestation is not a positive argument. It is a normative argument. The question is, do the norms of our society regard stripping a teenage girl and examining her private areas in search of an Advil as a reasonable exercise of the authority of the school or does it rise to the level of abuse, and since we are discuss a minor in this instance, of child molestation.
I think the consensus on this forum is that the school has acted unreasonably, and this public jury of the peers of the employees has decided that this is child molestation.
We are weighing the facts as reported against the moral standards to which we would hold those in charge. We have done the balancing and the scales, in a public forum, have tipped to "guilty as hell."
And when you attempt to argue otherwise, we are going to judge you against those same normative standards. It is our right as a society debating the actions of those whom it is in our power as the people of this country to hold accountable for their actions under the supposed authorities granted them in their various offices.
As your accusations (made behind other posters backs) fail, you try to distance yourself from them.
I hope when we meet out on the street, as soon as you give me your address and we arrange some witnesses, you show up with more brawn than the puny brains you are bringing to this argument.
Facts man. Argue facts. Which facts are you arguing from. State them. Lay out for us, which facts, as they appear on the record, you are relying upon, and why you think these justify the action of the state.
That is how you make a logical argument, not this pea-brained name calling, your argument is a "fantasy."
I am going to kick you scrawny little posting around this forum until you put together a proper set of facts, a proper argument and then I am going to shred you like one of those lions in the Colleseum, you mental and moral pipsqueek
I really cannot believe that you are here justfying these morally depraved acts. I cannot believe my eyes. I cannot believe that a so-called Freerepublican conservative would attempt to justify a strip search by a school official of a teenage girl in search of an Advil. I am appalled astonished, shocked and horrified.
So you can flee them again?
Okay, here you go:
Wilson did not order the search of Redding’s person based solely on an uncorroborated tip...After Wilson discovered pills, Marissa immediately attributed them to Redding. Even then, Wilson still refrained from immediately conducting a search of Redding’s person. To the contrary, he questioned Redding about her knowledge of the pills and her ownership of the black planner. It was only after Redding had acknowledged ownership of the planner, acknowledged her friendship with Marissa, and conceded that she had, in fact, lent her planner to Marissa with the express purpose of helping Marissa hide contraband from her parents, that Wilson proceeded to order the challenged search.
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