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Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time
Posted by Pile
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| There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage. |
It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch." |
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Zero Tolerance & the War on Drugs
Posted by gmaduck on 2008-04-08 14:52:37 | | Here is a prime example of why Zero Tolerance fails. In life there is a lot of grey: not everything is black or white. Zero Tolerance leaves no room for those grey areas. And the Drug War by our government is an absolute disaster, used to promote everything from reputations, budgets, power, and politics to international role playing (remember Iran-Contra?). But what it accomplishes is the destruction of reputations, the disruption of lives, the aliennation of the citizens, and the ubiqutious distrust of government. But the bigger question right now is why has it taken five years for us to hear about this case? |
that is unconstitutional!
Posted by elise the pirate on 2008-04-08 19:36:40 | | they did indeed violate, not only her rights, but also her privacy and self-respect. they had no business doing that and should not even believed the girl who was smuggling the drugs, as it is clear she wanted to shift the blame. the girl was an honors student, why did they even think she was carrying? and if they had doubts they should have called her mother first. this makes me so mad, I want to have those "officials" carted off to Guantanamo. where is this girl, she needs to b protected from those child molesters! damn, I hate the government. |
Stupity
Posted by John on 2009-03-01 07:42:09 | This is just one example of how stupid educated people act.
The girl caught with the pills, someone at school knew her and believed her when she told her side of the story. Therefor prompted the stupid strip search, our school system and the people that teach are stupid. Take school teachers I know plenty of them and most are gas hounds.
This is why America is stupid, we have educated stupid people, just because they got a piece of paper from collage, that does not mean they are smart or can make correct decisions. God help our children in the event of an emergency. |
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