Wednesday, December 29, 2010

TSA extends sexual abuse for stop-and-frisk to fly-and-frisk



New TSA regs extend sexually abusive searches from reasonable cause and supposed police safety to administrative (warrant-less) search and public safety (airport, school and skating rink are legally indistinguishable).

Most or all police departments train male officers to frisk females if no female officers are handy or pretty much whenever they feel like it. Any hope for a Fourth Amendment shield has evaporated under many decisions: http://www.rbs2.com/travel2.pdf. Small police departments with only a few male officers even feel free strip search female prisoners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWokzdFBNLs -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BVgBip-cd8&feature=related.

All courts require to excuse what anyone living outside the legal cloud would take for criminal sexual intrusion is reasonable cause of crime or any unspecified claim of officer safety (e.g., afraid to transport a handcuffed 15 year old girl): http://www.lawforkids.org/speakup/view_question.cfm?id=269&topic=OTHER.

TSA rules now mandate traumatic male on female enhanced frisking anytime there is no female agent available (happens mostly at small airports with only a few agents) and may always have permitted sexual touching pretty much whenever convenient (for the toucher?) -- for administrative searches
and supposed public safety. (2004!)-- TSA rules have begun to mandate women -- and children! -- be x-rated, x-rayed for remote viewers of the male sex (half the time?) for administrative searches and supposed public safety: http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2010/12/tsa-opposite-gender-screening-mandatory.html -- http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/328417-bos-lets-men-wand-frisk-female-passengers.html.

If courts carry on in their current backbone-less Fourth Amendment ways about TSA intrusions -- there is the felony criminal aspect they should think of first if you ask me -- there will equally be no discernible constitutional or legal line between assembly line x-rated, x-rays and groping at any high school or skating rink: public safety is public safety.

Going by this widely reported AP story and pictures, two small Douglas County, Colorado courthouses do not even attempt to avoid same-sex frisking and may even neglect remote viewers not seeing you directly (looks like a TV monitor right by the x-ray viewer; for the front door? -- wonder if he detected the label backing in her back pocket with the back of his hand): http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/full-body-scanners-popping-752566.html. I wonder if giant Cook County, Illinois courthouse which has begun using whole body scanners will forget all about traumatic sexual intrusion too? The media might check.

[Hint: small police departments: you too can purchase whole body scanners to use with remote female viewers for your detainees. Safe enough for giant Cook County jailhouse -- safe enough for your jailhouse: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/cook-county-jail-body-scans-85552562.html. Now that the technology is available you might think twice how much it might cost you if you don't: http://www.wbez.org/story/cook-county-pay-55-million-jail-inmates. Hint: all police departments: I drove a gypsy cab all night in the South Bronx and Harlem for years -- I am still alive. You need to be willing to take the "risk" (not the largest of your day) of transporting a handcuffed, strapped down, locked in female behind a shield for a five minute ride to the police station in order to protect her from traumatic sexual assault (policy protects you from criminal charges only because the gov made you do it); from what your wife and daughters would be terrified of at small airports.]


ALLOW ME TO EXTEND THIS POST TO EVERYDAY POLICING:


Three videos of male officers subjecting female victims to (ever so slow motion) sexual battery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxH1CnYhd8&feature=related
(groped in first minute – released at tenth minute) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7JEA4iK4&feature=related
http://www.wktv.com/news/local/FULL-DASHCAM-VIDEO-OF-21111-Utica-traffic-stop-136602198.html
(groping begins at 12 minutes -- takes a long time to load)
 * * * * * *
Back when the airport screening got heavy I got on the net to research what the constitutional limits must really be.  Turns out police departments around the country think there are no limits criminal or constitutional to male officers groping females.  I was shocked by one of my first finds: a widely reported story of a courthouse guard groping a mother with two little children to find a sticker in her back pocket.  Story was about scanners coming to courthouses -- groping not even commented on!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/us_news/2010/Nov/24/full_body_scanners_popping_up_at_courthouses.html

Officer safety is the first excuse.  But a female checked for guns -- which can be done without touching anything with fingers -- and rear cuffed behind is a shield is not going to, first, do the Houdini and slip the bracelets and, then, do the Incredible Hulk, tear aside the partition, draw a sharp object from her bra and scratch the police officer. 

Second is the mindless notion that it is not sexual battery as long a cop does it.  "We are professionals doing a job."  Even: "We are like doctors."  Policy may or not discourage going as far as possible but whatever they do, they don't consider it illegal.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090210210037AAXeuFi

Turns out at the airport the letter of the law is that once you enter the security zone, you must submit to the complete body grope -- even if you are a female and only males are available (which is supposed to be not extremely unusual in small airports).  It presumably is not strictly enforced -- but just the idea that it can be written shows a giant mental cog is missing with law enforcement on this issue.
http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2010/12/tsa-opposite-gender-screening-mandatory.html

Here a female reporter incredibly subjects herself to a male full body frisk on camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFEML_BlRrc&feature=related
They even practice kids on kids (presumably over 18).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-dcSUDPE8&feature=related

Simple enough: any search for evidence can be conducted at the police station by the same matron who would strip search the woman if arrested.  Probable cause means better than 50/50 chance she will be charged, right?  In any case, women in this country can live with the fact that they may be pulled in to a police station to be searched some time in their lives.  I can't find the link but Kansas City (I think) police recently held a woman for three days until a female officer came to work to search her for a major shoplift.  What women cannot live with is leaving their driver's license home and knowing some brute will perfectly free to grope all over her like she was a teenage boy.

The same law applies to cops that applies to everybody else.  A possibly needed common sense legal point: you cannot justify battery because of some good overall effect -- like freeing more police to patrol -- you can only justify battery because of a dangerous circumstance on the spot.  One more: If any male police officer can grope a female for any reason as long as it is not sexual -- so can any other male.

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