Police do strip search on the side of the road for drugs

As you might be aware, there are Milwaukee cops who have committed illegal and unconstitutional cavity searches on the streets of Milwaukee. All in the name of the War on Drugs, of course. Well, this isn't much of a surprise, there are police doing this in other parts of the U.S. A male Texas state trooper, David Farrell, pulled over Angel and Ashley Dobbs, an aunt and niece.

Farrell pulled them over because he stated they threw cigarette butts from their car. He claimed he smelled marijuana in the car. After doing a search of the car he radioed for Trooper Kelley Helleson, a female trooper who performed an anal/vagina cavity of the two Dobbs. Supposedly they were hiding marijuana in that part of their body. This was done on the side of the road. There are so many things wrong with this. First of all, this cop might have lied about smelling marijuana, especially considering none was found.

Two, while it is very questionable should police have the ability to search a car based on an allegedly smelling marijuana, it is unquestionable that does not give the ability to perform the kind of search that Helleson did. There was no medical professional who did the search, it was did in public, they weren't under arrest, there was no warrant or order by a judge. Sheesh, did these cops even take a class on Constitutional law at the Police Academy? Now, to other abuses of police authority.

Undercover police often engage in a practice of targeting some protestor for some reason (such as during the Occupy protests) and instead of making an arrest at the scene, jumping out of a car or a crowd and quickly dragging him or her away, with barely any badge shown. Sometimes, a badge isn't even shown. This also goes on in Great Britain, which has even greater civil rights abuses then in the U.S. Now, how do we know as citizens that the person doing the dragging is even a cop in these circumstances? There shouldn't be scenes out of Chile's Pinochet where political opponents were commonly dragged off in broad daylight.

In this last case, a 17 year old girl is stopped by police. They demand identification out of her. She writes:

" I said that I felt I didn’t need to give my name because I hadn’t done anything wrong. They insisted I had to give them my name but wouldn’t give me a valid reason as to why, it was simply because, “they said so.” I refused calmly and said I didn’t consent to their prima facie code of law and that I would like to continue walking unencumbered. The male officer said to put my hands behind my back and put me in handcuffs, then took me to the police station downtown."

The judge later lectures the girl that she had to give her name. This though assumes that the girl knows they had a reasonable suspicion to stop her, that being the case of a missing runaway. The question is, why didn't police just say they had a missing runaway?

What is so hard about that? She knew she had a 4th Amendment right against having to produce I.D. unless there was a reasonable suspicion of some sort of crime. Well, the police didn't even bother to inform her of their suspicions and legally, the courts haven't required police to state the reason for a detention/demand to produce I.D.

So, you as a citizen can be arrested if you don't believe the police have reasonable suspicion and you ask why you are being detained or having to produce I.D. Now, you can ask if you are being detained and on this issue they have to give an answer. They can't arrest, or at least in theory they can't, someone for leaving when they stated they weren't being detained.

So, police can arrest you depending on the circumstances, you might spend 72 hours in a jail awaiting to see what the charges against you are in fact. That's a pretty long time for the government to hold someone without a charge. It in fact, makes a mockery of our system of justice and liberty.