The Albany Times Union recently reported two stories of the local police department's abuse of searches.
The first case is of a man who was picked up at the bus station. Police say they considered him suspicious because he was wearing a back pack...at a bus station..yeah, suspicious. Oh wait! I forgot, he's black! That must be it. Did they charge him for traveling while black? He was forcibly sedated and searched. They never found anything. The hospital later billed him for his trouble. Read the whole thing here.
He was quickly handcuffed and falsely arrested. He was taken to a station to be strip-searched and then to a hospital, where doctors forcibly sedated him with a cocktail of powerful drugs, including one that clouded his memory of the incident.
A camera was inserted in his rectum, he was forced to vomit and his blood and urine were tested for drugs and alcohol. Scans of his digestive system were performed using X-ray machines, according to hospital records obtained by the Times Union.
The search, conducted without a search warrant, came up empty.
Our second story is of a woman who fit a profile - she apparently was a white woman in a rental car. That was enough to pull her over and search her vajayjay on the side of the road. The police officer also took her cell phone and started calling people on it. Read about this gross violation here.
This brings me to the informative portion of our lesson today: know your rights. I highly recommend downloading and reading this informative booklet from the ACLU. UPDATE: HERE IS A LINK TO THE WALLET CARD.The actions of police in the minutes that followed would end in controversy rather than with an arrest. They would also leave Shutter, a 28-year-old single mother from Ravena, shaken and angry after one of the officers allegedly inserted his finger into Shutter's vagina on a public street during an apparent search for drugs.
Sadly, in both cases above knowing one's rights probably would not have mattered at the time as it seems the police officers were going to do whatever the hell they wanted to do anyway. At least when you know your rights have been violated you can later press charges.