August 05, 2013 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
This video is real and it’s rape by a police officer over a citation for littering.
Now a search over “the odor of marijuana” in a car results in a body cavity search but not a search of any non-sexual parts of the body.
I’d like to make a joke about it but it’s horrifying.
I wonder how many men have been searched like that roadside.
Thanks to everybody for the heads up and the thumbs down.
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My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
Body cavity searches, ultrasound wand probes–the Repubs are finding whole new ways to legally commit rape with a foreign object.
1What would happen if someone refused to allow a body cavity search?
2Requiring corporations storing hazardous chemicals to have adequate insurance, or enacting zoning laws to keep them away from residential areas, is “overly intrusive government.” Why do Republicans think that corporations should be treated with greater respect than individuals? (Campaign donation levels, perhaps?)
3Why would the women agree to to that? Not trying to blame the victim but clearly an officer inserting fingers in your coochie and patootie while you’re standing on the side of a public road is not okay.
4SomedayGirl, they did NOT agree to it.
5The thing that really made me angry was this, “The male officer was suspended and the female officer fired.” They should have both gotten the same punishment.
6I hope to God they are suing.
7For those who can’t get to the article above, or can’t get video at work, here’s another link: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/texas-women-sue-humiliating-body-cavity-searches-roadside-article-1.1390230
8As long as Texas police are so diligent about body cavities, maybe they can do something about this – all 20,000 of ’em.
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/04/clearing-texas-rape-kit-backlog-brings-hefty-price/
9But then again … those alleged bottles of excrement in the state capitol are more important, aren’t they …
10That’s an old article. Do we have more recent statistics?
11I know the crime lab has been working overtime to clear the backlog.
12It’s hard to understand how officers, clearly not operating under police procedure, only get suspended and fired. Anyone else who did that to another person would be in jail, and then brought before the court for rape. If police officers held up a bank, wouldn’t they be charged for robbery? But instead, they’ll be unable to find work anywhere else, and then try to collect disability like the pepper spray cop.
13Susan, overtime is good. No doubt we both agree that real time would be better. Justice delayed is justice denied.
14There is more current news, Susan. Here’s Republican Jodie Laubenberg’s contribution from June. Such a brilliant lady, she is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/jodie-laubenberg-texas-rape_n_3493220.html
15Umptydump, I just read the article you posted. I remember it now. The backlogs are at the local level and being reported to DPS. DPS is helping clear the backlogs, which isn’t mentioned in the article.
I just looked and we are HIRING! If anyone has the qualifications, we have stuff in the crime labs in a few cities including Austin. There’s a sprinkling of other stuff across the state as well in other areas, some of which only require a high school degree. Trooper trainee positions are also open. Go to http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/index.htm and click on EMPLOYMENT.
My agency isn’t perfect. We’re made up of people and people aren’t perfect. We try hard, though. Most of us are thoroughly committed to our motto of Courtesy, Service, Protection. For every bad apple, there’s a 1000 or more walking the walk. Of course, that’s not news, so it doesn’t make the papers. 🙂
16Thanks your your thoughts, Susan. Points well taken. It’s just that, as in any organization, the few bad apples manage to cause a disproportionate share of damage.
17I dropped down further in that article and watched a second video, done on Highway 288, in Brazoria County… The second one was in broad daylight…
18SusanF, I watched the video first but to me it looks like they consent. They follow the officers directions, they stand as told, turn as told, they don’t move away.
In the article they say the officer told them there would be a female officer coming to “get familiar with their womanly parts” and as far as I can tell they didn’t refuse then. They asked specifically of that meant inside and the officer said yes it did. They didn’t refuse then either.
He DOES say on the video this’ll go easier for them if they just do as told. They could have said no and forced the officer to get a warrant to search the vehicle and make an arrest to do the cavity search. It seems like they did the calculus and decided to submit.
19The 2014 election will give the abused women of Texas their opportunity to make changes to the male clique now in power. Will they? Let’s hope so!
20I’m puzzled by Someday girl’s assumption that the women were “Free” to decide one way or another when an armed officer tells them how its going to be. This isn’t autonomy by any stretch of the term. Can someone consent to be raped? Because that is what happened. They were overwhelmed by force majeure.
21There is a possible explanation for these odd searches: tips from the NSA resulting from false positives in a database search. Say the NSA searches their database, finds something that they deem suspicious, tips off the DEA, and the DEA’s “Special Operations Division” (SOD) tips off local police to stop someone and search for drugs.
The police don’t want anyone to know that the lead was generated from an illegal search, so they use a fake excuse to justify the search. Most of the time, the search turns up drugs, and nobody listens. However, sometimes the tip was a false positive – or the police pick the wrong person.
Outlandish? Here’s Reuters on the subject:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc=932
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
…
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said.
After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as “parallel construction.”
22If only they taught sex-ed in Kabu……er I meant Texas police would know more about sanitary inspections and how and when to change gloves after an exam of one person. Maybe they should initiate abstinence only body cavity searches until the grownups arrive.
23OT-my take on the Benghazi raid on CIA is Al Quada got their information from the aftermath of dumb bass dubya and Cheney outing a covert CIA agent and her family and all her contacts from around the world and used that info to attack CIA in Benghazi. IMHO it’s all bush and cheney’s fault.
24aimai, not sure what the firearm has to do with it. The officers never threaten the women with a gun. The women don’t seem to have been in fear for their lives and they don’t make the claim that they were.
I don’t think most women think an officer of the law can stick her fingers in your lady bits on the side of the road in broad daylight with traffic whizzing by without permission. You clearly have at least two options, one of which is to say no. Same with the vehicle search – you can say no.
25The real difficulty on doing a cavity search on GOP males is getting them to pull their head out first.
26I think these cops are just getting their rocks off.
27Someday Girl–
I can imagine a lot of women thinking it’s better to go along in an effort to keep from being physically incapacitated instead of fighting. What’s right and what’s expedient are too often not the same.
28Wow! I guess it was the women’s fault for not pulling out their own guns and firing first? Or not risking being given a beating and jailed for “resisting” the law? Surely if they had just said “hey, wait a minute!” they would have been allowed to leave without trouble.
Pregnant women have been tased within an inch of their lives for refusing to sign a traffic ticket. You must have led a very sheltered life if you don’t know anyone who has been injured or jailed or both for refusing suggestions and commands from people who think their badges and uniforms make them supremely powerful.
29SomedayGirl, it isn’t at all clear that when a police officer holds you by the side of the road and orders you to wait until another officer arrives to do a body cavity search that you have the right to say no. The alternative was obvious: the officer planned on taking them down to the police station and holding them until a body cavity search could be conducted.
The officer had no right even to ask to conduct such a search under these circumstances.
30In Texas,who do you complain to? Nutters will just laugh at you. Dems don’t have any sway in the lege.
31I coudn’t watch the videos, but this sort of police-state intrusion always reminds me of this phrase:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
JUST powers are derived from the consent of the governed.
What we have going on in the Great State of Texas can hardly be called “Just”; it is tyranny.
Until the people of this state stand up to the likes of Perry, Dewhurst, Laubenberg, and MY State Representative, the odiously sanctimonious Paul Workman (Matt Dillon wannabe), you can expect the DPS and any officer who feels the need to stick his/her fingers wherever they want.
Get ready for it. Get lubed and bent over, because they are coming for YOU.
32Are you kidding me? These girls need to find a plaintiff’s attorney and fast…
33The level of actual knowledge of what, exactly, is contained in the Constitution is depressingly low. How many of these people would even know to ask for a warrant before they were bodily searched in such a manner? ‘Course it appears that the law enforcers are just as ignorant. And folks make snide remarks about DC. We don’t have a vote in the Congress–despite paying Federal income taxes–but our local government is far more enlightened.
34I’m sorry, but this is sexual assault, simple as that. Both officers should be doing 10-15 in the state pen, and their boss should be out on “his” ass, never to hold a law enforcement job again.
If the revolt against such crimes must be made, let it begin here.
35I think there’s some misunderstanding here. What the officers in both of these scenarios did was wrong, and by that I mean all of them. One officer shouldn’t be suspended, they all should be. Their behavior was beyond the pale and abhorrent.
The women should not have agreed to the search. The minute an officer said there would be a cavity search on the side of the road, I would have said “You can arrest me for something or you can let me leave but you’re not sticking a finger in my behind while I’m standing here with traffic going by, sir. I may not look that bright but even I know that’s not okay.” Not sure what guns have to do with any of this conversation except to add an unnecessary tinge of hysteria.
36Repeat after me – “I have a Constitutional Right to an attorney and against unreasonable searches.”
The Bill of Rights provides that law enforcement must first obtain a warrant from a judge by showing probable cause. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.
37I do believe that I would not have consented to that cavity search. But, then I am older and outspoken(an advantage of age).
38But, Texas does seem to have a problem with strange laws and law enforcement(in all fairness, not just Texas). Here’s a link to a story that starts in Tenaha and travels to other places along the road to “civil forfeiture”. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=1
The story is long but worth the read.
Someday Girl, I believe what we all are saying is for police officers to even begin to believe those searches were legal and enforceable reflects very badly on their whole organization. The whole “Good Guys against the Bad Guys” attitude is pervasive across many police forces as is the use of invasive searches and deadly force without cause. Swat Team fever is epidemic and it’s past time to reevaluate the whole idea of cops as paramilitary. I use to have a great deal of respect for police officers, now I warn my grandkids to be extremely careful if officers approach them and make sure not to give them the slightest reason to rough handle them.
39To make myself clear, if any cop ever abuses one of my kids or grandkids this way, their hide will decorate the side of my garbage bin.
Must watch blood pressure . . . I may have to cross stitch that on a pillow! Frankly the exceptionally wide discretion TX police are given for cavity searches and the searchee has no discretion at all as in we can do it here on the roadside, dearer, or in jail sounds like some form of Stand Your Ground for the cops. This stuff has to end up in the highest possible courts in the land immediately if not sooner This insanity could spread to other states, especially those with Repug governors and legislatures. Not even this old granny would be safe.
40The women of this State have the right to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches by the State legislature. Or maybe not.
41I agree the women should have spoken up BUT we are all, male and female, conditioned to obey the police from childhood. Also did you note the traffic? NONE, to speak of, and when two women in a car are out at night and a cop car or two stops them they know nobody is going to be driving by to wave at and say HELP HELP! We also don’t know the whole story on the women. BUT the whole thing was ridiculous. I saw this a good while back. I could go on and on but won’t so you can relax.
42Marge, there are two different cases being discussed here – one with two white women stopped at night and cavity searched for littering. The other is two black women stopped for speeding and cavity searched during the day. Even in the case of the night stop, cars are still going by and the women are standing in the headlights of the police cars as the search takes place. There’s just no way either of these situations is acceptable.
Grace, yes, perhaps it IS in part a function of age and awareness. Age you have to wait for but awareness can be imparted early. I thought it would be self-evident that, no matter how much respect you’ve been taught for authority, law enforcement can’t probe around in your pelvis without arresting you. And they absolutely can’t do that in public no matter what. Time to start passing out Pocket Constitutions, I guess.
It would be nice if this outcome was visited on the officers in these two cases but I’m not holding out much hope:
http://www.startribune.com/local/212496021.html
43Have you all seen this on-line today?
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/06/republicans-seek-decriminalize-rape-crimes-women.html
I don’t believe the Repukes can go much lower, they are already primeval slug slime as it is.
44Thanks, SomeDay Girl. Good points. And Marcia. the GOP wants to decriminalize rape? What else do they want to decriminalize?
45