Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!

Updated 4/4/2012

The headline is one of my dad's little lines.
From stitchrippers.com.

On that strip-searching ruling by the Supreme Court, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about Justice Kennedy's anecdotes in defense of the argument that dangerous persons are often arrested for minor infractions and that therefore everybody may need to take 'em off for the cops:

First,  how many mass murderers or terrorists have been busted on inaudible bicycle bell charges?

Second, about that Timothy McVeigh? Are you saying he was strip-searched after they picked him up and they found some evidence that he was the Oklahoma City bomber, or that he was carrying a weapon that would have threatened them, or anything else that would have made it a reasonable thing to do?

Third, as far as the 9/11 terrorist who was stopped for a traffic violation? Are you saying he wasn't strip-searched and that if he had been they would have found something that would somehow have prevented the destruction of the World Trade Center?

That's what I thought.

As for the guy of whom
Justice Kennedy said one person arrested for disorderly conduct in Washington State “managed to hide a lighter, tobacco, tattoo needles and other prohibited items in his rectal cavity,”
 all I can say is if that guy is ruining my argument then I think he's just a total asshole.

Update:
Looks like Justice Breyer asked some of the same questions as me, and got answers:
The New York Federal District Court, to which I have referred, conducted a study of 23,000 persons admitted to the Orange County correctional facility between 1999 and 2003.These 23,000 persons underwent a strip search of the kind described. Of these 23,000 persons, the court wrote, “the County encountered three incidents of drugs recovered from an inmate’s anal cavity and two incidents of drugs falling from an inmate’s underwear during the course of a strip search.” The court added that in four of these five instances there may have been “reasonable suspicion” to search, leaving only one instance in 23,000 in which the strip search policy “arguably” detected additional contraband.
[...] After all, those arrested for minor offenses are often stopped and arrested unexpectedly. And they consequently will have had little opportunity to hide things in their body cavities. (Adam B at Kos)

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