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This makes our police look good


peterms

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There's a lot of things which we can properly criticise our police for, but this bunch of knuckledragging psychos make them look good. Intimate body searches on the roadside, for dropping a cigarette butt? It can only be intended as punishment and humiliation, nothing to do with law enforcement. The question is, should these cops be sacked, or sectioned?

Texas troopers subject women to roadside cavity searches after routine traffic stop

Two Texan women have filed a lawsuit for being subjected to embarrassing ‘roadside body cavity searches’ by state troopers who searched their genital regions.

The women were stopped by a trooper for throwing a cigarette butt out of their car window, which is prohibited under the Texas Health & Safety Code that outlaws littering. Angel Dobbs, 38, and her niece Ashley Dobbs, 24, were stopped by a trooper on State Highway 161 and forced to exit their vehicles. Trooper David Farrell then began to question the women about marijuana, proceeding to search the car and then calling his female colleague Kelley Helleson to the scene to search the women’s bodies.

The trooper’s dash-mounted camera captured the incident on tape, which was published online by the Dallas Morning News. The video shows Helleson using her fingers to search the anuses and vaginas of the women. The trooper used the same latex glove to touch the genitals of both women, while conducting the search on the side of the road in full view of the passing vehicles.

One of the women was suffering from a cyst, which Helleson touched with her fingers, causing “severe and continuing pain and discomfort”.

"Angel Dobbs was overwhelmed with emotion and a feeling of helplessness and reacted stating that Helleson had just violated her in a most horrific manner," the lawsuit states.

Farrell said she ordered the search because the women were “acting weird” – even though he found no marijuana in the car and had no indication of any illegal activity aside from the littering. He then tried to “morph this situation into a DWI investigation”, the Dallas Morning News reports. Neither of the women had been drinking.

The troopers, as well as Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw, will now be forced to attend court to settle the incident. McCraw said he was aware of complaints about “unlawful strip searches, cavity searches and the like”, but did not do anything to address the issue.

Scott H. Palmer, an attorney for the woman, told the Dallas Morning News that this is a case of public sexual assault and that “no one’s ever seen the likes of this”.

“We can’t let them get away with it,” he said.

The case is currently under investigation by the Dallas County Attorney’s Office and will go before a grand jury in January.

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Don't see the problem here, I was walking back from the pub the other night when a police man said he needed to do a cavity search on me, he even stuck his tongue in my ear whilst he did it, I didn't run off to the press and complain.

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Is there any notable difference between police forces in England and how they are perceived by the citizenry? (South Yorkshire vs West Midlands, etc.) Any one force have a particularly bad reputation?

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Is there any notable difference between police forces in England and how they are perceived by the citizenry? (South Yorkshire vs West Midlands, etc.) Any one force have a particularly bad reputation?

The Met seems to have more than its fair share of problems, with entrenched corruption going back at least as far back the 50s, deep-rooted racism, and a culture of violence.

I can't however think of another force which was found to be so irredeemably corrupt, malign and vicious that it had to be disbanded, as happened to the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.

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I can't however think of another force which was found to be so irredeemably corrupt, malign and vicious that it had to be disbanded, as happened to the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.

Appropriately named then, eh?!

Don't know if this is common knowledge, but I have it on good authority that Notting Hill police station was or is known to those posted there as "Rorke's Drift", which probably sums up the mentality (although I admittedly find myself laughing at the sheer brazenness of it).

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From Andrew Gilligan article:

...England has 39 police forces, headed by 39 chief constables or commissioners. In the past 18 months, seven have been sacked for misconduct, suspended, placed under criminal or disciplinary investigation or forced to resign. That is not far off a fifth of the total.

In the same period, at least eight deputy or assistant chief constables have also been placed under ongoing investigation, suspended or forced out for reasons of alleged misconduct. No fewer than 11 English police forces – just under 30 per cent – have had one or more of their top leaders under a cloud...

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