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A woman says a sheriff's deputy in Texas stripped her naked in a gas station parking lot and administered a cavity search of her genitals because of suspicions she was in possession of marijuana."It was embarrassing, degrading," Charnesia Corley told CNN's Don Lemon on Thursday. "I felt low, I felt helpless."
The incident happened during a traffic stop in June in Harris County. A male sheriff's deputy pulled Corley over and then searched her car after saying he smelled marijuana in it, she said.
After finding nothing, she said, he called a female officer out to search Corley.
"They took me around to the side of my car, and she tells me, 'Pull your pants down,'" Corley told CNN.
Corley, who was handcuffed, said she told the female deputy that she didn't have any underwear on.
The female deputy replied that it didn't matter, pulled Corley's pants down and then told her to bend over, Corley told CNN.
"I bent over and she proceeded to stick her fingers in me, and I popped up immediately and I told her, 'No! What are you doing? You can't do that to me,' she said. '"I felt like they raped me'
The deputy told her that she could do what she wanted because it was a narcotics search, according to Corley.
After Corley resisted, another female deputy was apparently called to complete the search.
"I felt like they raped me," Corley told CNN.
Her attorney, Samuel Cammack III, said that what the deputies did in the middle of a parking lot was unconstitutional.
"It wasn't a strip search, it was a manual cavity search," he told CNN.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that it was unable to comment on the matter "until the completion of an ongoing internal affairs investigation, and pending the status of civil litigation."
"We anticipate that the office of Inspector General will share their findings with Sheriff Ron Hickman in accordance with state law and civil service procedures in the near future," the statement said.
But Harris County Sheriff's spokesperson Thomas Gilleland told CNN affiliate KTRK last week that the deputies did everything as they should.
Gilleland said one deputy wrote in the report that Corley said they could "strip search her if I needed to."
Corley denied that she had given them her consent.
One thing is for sure, you won't see this on an episode of 'Cops' on tv.
I don't think searching her for drugs was necessarily that bad, but perhaps doing it in public was. They could have taken her inside somewhere , or to the police station to do it.
What is wrong with these idiots? Since it is not weapons they are concerned about the suspects need to be taken to the police station if it's that important to search them in areas normally covered by undergarments.
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My opinion doesn't matter, but frankly I believe strip-searching should be illegal unless law enforcement believes the person is hiding a weapon.
or drugs. Believe it or not, this is how a lot of drugs get into the prison system to begin with. Having said that, this officer went about it ALL wrong. If you suspect they have drugs hiding in their privates, you bring a drug sniffing dog. They will alert to the drugs just like if they were sniffing a car. At that point, you have probable cause for the arrest and then you take them to the police station where they can be searched in private. Of course, this is if you REALLY want to go through all of this for some weed. It isn't like there could be pounds of the stuff shoved up there. IMO, issue her a ticket for whatever traffic infraction she committed which got her pulled over in the first place. Warn her about the pot smell and how she 'could' be arrested and then send her on her way. Instead, now they have a national incident and potential huge lawsuit on their hands. Again, over a little weed.
[QUOTETotally disgusting. She even said two female officers were on her and at no point these officers thought this was wrong? Horrible![/quote]
Why should the female officers think it was wrong, it was a legal search. The search was supported by reasonable suspicion. That suspicion panned out because they did find a drug. I would feel violated too, but that's beside the point. Do folks not realize that people can and do get legally strip searched everyday.
As horrific as this sounds, the thing that is even more disturbing is the perception of people that whatever they read or see on the news is accurate, unbiased news. If even part of the story is true, the police should be held accountable for and sued for 'gross stupidity.'
But, sadly, the often inaccurate perception of 'truth in 'news' reporting' shapes the way many think and view the world. Meanwhile, the media (typically the tabloids, but, increasingly - regular news outlets) deliver 'editorials laced with hyperbole', not news, and then hide behind the pretense of 'journalism' - with little or no accountability for the havoc they wreak.
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