I haven't seen this posted anywhere on SOTT yet. The US Supreme Court voted 5-4 Monday in favor of allowing Law Enforcement Agencies to strip search anybody that is arrested or detained for any offense. This is from the article:
There are some interesting things in the court's opinion section too, such as this little tidbit:
So apparently even minor offenses such as not wearing a seatbelt can be subject to strip search and it's all legal.
This is from another article I linked:
They had to get that whole 9-11 angle in there.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/02/supreme-court-signs-off-on-strip-searches-for-all-arrestees/
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/03/4386296/justices-ok-strip-search-in-any.html
Monday's decision sprang from the 2005 arrest of New Jersey resident Albert Florence. Florence was arrested after an officer pulled over his wife for speeding, only to discover that he had a warrant for an unpaid fine. After spending seven days in two different jails, being strip searched upon admittance at both, he was released after officials figured out that he’d already paid the fine.
There are some interesting things in the court's opinion section too, such as this little tidbit:
In Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, 323?324 (2001),for example, police arrested a mother driving with her two children because their seat belts were not buckled. This Court held that the Constitution did not forbid an arrest for a minor seatbelt offense. Id., at 323. But, in doing so, it pointed out that the woman was held for only an hour(before being taken to a magistrate and released on bond) and that the search?she had to remove her shoes, jewelry, and the contents of her pockets, id., at 355?was not unusually harmful to [her] privacy or . . . physical interests.’” Id., at 354 (quoting Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 818 (1996)). Would this Court have upheld the arrest had the magistrate not been immediately available,had the police housed her overnight in the jail, and had they subjected her to a search of the kind at issue here?
So apparently even minor offenses such as not wearing a seatbelt can be subject to strip search and it's all legal.
This is from another article I linked:
According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.
A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.
Justice Kennedy responded that “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” He noted that Timothy McVeigh, later put to death for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was first arrested for driving without a license plate. “One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93,” Justice Kennedy added.
They had to get that whole 9-11 angle in there.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/02/supreme-court-signs-off-on-strip-searches-for-all-arrestees/
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/03/4386296/justices-ok-strip-search-in-any.html