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.
Sources not available on request.
Jackboots are now part of your fantasy scenario?
Freaky.
"Public schools or full of adult child predators, both male and female. This is well documented daily and weekly in this country. You haven't' heard?"
Interesting comment from somebody who bows at the altar of authoritarianism and refuses to demand that authorities respect the God-given and constitutional rights of those they abuse without any sense of decency and no just cause.
lmao off at you....You don’t know what was said there either do you? Shaking my head & wondering if you are mojave aka rp...
An example: When you assume force, rather that prove it.
Source is available. Her direct testimony and the basis for her suit in the first place.
Remember, this case has not been tried. It was dismissed in summary dispostion, on the grounds that if true, the Court could not grant relief, under the claim that her 4th ammendment rights were not violated. When/if it is reversed upon the en banc decision, it will go back to trial.
"I was embarrassed and scared, but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked," said Redding in a sworn affidavit following the incident.
Quick, invent another fact.
No, I assumed the facts as related in the COA statement of facts. These facts comport with a normal dictionary definition of force, ergo, she was forced. You are not engaged in an argument of logic, but merely resorting to semantic quibbling.
Too bad hysteria isn't a substitute for facts.
Invent what? The child was scared. Seems plain & simple enough to see.
So is the Internet.
I can't help wonder out loud, if they have such strict zero tolerance drug and alcohol policies, are those put in charge of the kids, those that teach the kids and provide safety for the kids, are they *randomly* drug tested continuously to determine if the administrators and teachers are drug and alcohol users?
I'd bet they are not.
No one has invented a fact. You have invented an argument over the quibble, is it force when an authority ASKS you to do something that is beyond the pale or DIRECTS or TELLS you to do something that is beyond the pale.
Me, I if I were on the jury I would settle for the ASK and settle on this girl $1M from the personal property of each of these petty authoritarians for even asking.
You haven't shown that anyone terrorized or forced her when they "asked" for a search. Beg on though.
But has that to do with this story? You seem to be kicking up dust here in an effort to distract from this story.
The guy is a moral scoundrel.
You've done little else. Except for ad hominem remarks.
No ping, no surprise. Oh, and the only child molestation in the thread comes out of your own fantasies.
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