Cross-posted at DailyKos. Three women, “who Miami-Dade police illegally strip-searched after their arrests” — following protests outside the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas Conference in downtown Miami — have won “a $6.25 million class action settlement for themselves and thousands of other women subjected to similar treatment.”
Miami police, it turns out, have been routinely strip-searching women at the county jail for years. And so have cops in Sacramento and — get this — San Francisco … More below:
From today’s NewStandard News:
It turns out the successful attorney was Mark Merin of Sacramento, CA who recently won “the largest settlement in the history of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department over strip-search violations at the county jail.” Merin has filed “similar suits in other counties in California as well as in Miami.” In a stunning interview with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman on August 24, 2004, Merin described the Sacramento strip searches:
AMY GOODMAN: Give me an example?
MARK MERIN: An example of the strip search? A group of women who didn’t know each other, could be 18 years old to 78, would be brought into a room, six or eight at a time, in a room that was no longer – no larger than six by eight feet with footprints painted on the floor. Then were totally naked. They had been disrobed before they entered the room. Then they had to in groups bend over, expose their body cavities, spread their genitalia for visual inspection with someone with a flashlight looking in, harassing them, ordering them at times to jump, to dance.
People — Mormons who wear a religious garment so they can enter the temple were ordered to rip it off, or to remove it or it would be ripped off. Women who were menstruating without any sanitary napkins were required to remove tampons and stand there bleeding in other people’s blood. I mean, absolutely unbelievable. And it was videotaped. All of these were archived. These videotapes were archived so that they – they thought they could actually use these to show that perhaps there was some kind of security need that they had to inspect people’s crevices in order to insure that things wouldn’t be smuggled in.
AMY GOODMAN: Over how long a period did this take place?
MARK MERIN: Well, we know that it took place at least from 2000 up to the present day, because we got discovery, but we believe that it went back until 1984. …
These humiliating, unconstitutional searches weren’t confined to Sacramento and Miami. They also occurred in San Francisco:
… We recently have had a court certify that to move forward as a class action. The County of San Francisco has asked us to mediate that dispute. It looks like we’re looking at thousands of plaintiffs in that case, and these are people who were just picked up for drunk driving, for loitering, for being under the influence. Anything.
Merin spoke to Goodman in August 2004 about the Miami case, which was just settled, as well as the extent of the practice and its continuation in overseas prisons such as Abu Ghraib:
AMY GOODMAN: When you heard about what happened at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq, your thoughts?
MARK MERIN: I realized that the people who were sent over there from the United States to run those prisons were just extending the experience that they had here in our prison system. It seems that it was just a further step that they were taking to use nudity to control and dehumanize and humiliate. And I – of course, I was shocked, but I have been shocked every time I learn about new abuses here in Marin County or San Mateo, where we have other suits pending. …
See also:
- Stop the FTAA
- Fragments of the Future: The FTAA in Miami, from Alternet: “What went down in Miami was a dramatic example of how hallowed American rights are being dismantled in the name of the war on terrorism.”
Emphases mine.