Southampton NY woman’s strip-search case gets trial
Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 9:49 am | By: Radical Russ
Southampton woman’s strip-search case gets trial — Newsday.com
A federal appellate court yesterday ordered that a trial be held to determine if Southampton Village police violated the civil rights of a woman by strip-searching her in a cell that contained a video camera.Stacey Hartline, then 21, sued the village and four police officers for $1 million in 2003 after she was strip-searched, following a misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession. The charges were eventually dismissed.
The civil suit Hartline filed was thrown out in 2006 by U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley in Central Islip. Hurley said that the officers had reason to believe she might have been concealing contraband, and that there had been no previous rulings by higher courts objecting to the circumstances surrounding her search.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, however, said it was irrelevant if the circumstances had not been previously ruled on, and it was unclear if the police had “reasonable suspicion that she was secreting contraband on her person.” That is up to a trial to decide, the judges said. No trial date has been set.
“Ultimately, if the facts of this case amount to reasonable suspicion, then strip-searches will become commonplace,” the judges further wrote in a 15-page opinion. “Given the unique, intrusive nature of strip-searches, as well as the multitude of less investigative techniques available to officers confronted by misdemeanor offenders, that result would be unacceptable in any society that takes privacy and bodily integrity seriously.”
According to court papers, Hartline was stopped by a village officer because her truck was missing a rear license plate. The arresting officer said he saw a stem of a marijuana plant on the truck floor and a search found other bits of marijuana. Hartline said the officer never asked her if she had any marijuana or other contraband before arresting her.
Hartline said she was “crying hysterically” when a female officer made her remove her clothes and bend over, according to the court’s decision.
They pull over a young woman, find a stem on the floor of her truck, arrest her for misdemeanor possession, force her to strip and bend over for an officer and a camera, and then the charges are dismissed. And then the first judge she sees says that there was good reason to believe she could have been hiding some contraband in her body (I don’t know what… a gun, a knife, some weed?) even though they found nothing but a stem and some “bits” of marijuana in the truck, but nothing on her person.
This has nothing to do with honest police work and everything to do with harassing and intimidating cannabis consumers… and maybe a bit of pervert voyeurism to boot. Give Stacey Hartline her million bucks and teach these cops to leave the strip searches for the hard core violent felons.
Just heard, al 4 officers found not guilty. There was NO working camera either….