Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem
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."
The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
I find your fantasy about fantasies disturbing.
It was not a fantasy but a question, a direct question that you could provide an answer to except you are such a low-life snake in the grass.
I am not afraid to ping him & I did. As I see you are very big on that issue aren’t you? I am sure you are keeping rp right up to date on this thread anyway....lmao!
These public government schools are loaded with perverts and child predators, both male and female. It's in the news almost daily.
As a parent, you'd have to be a lunatic to to sit by and allow this.
The Libertarian pro-drug screed is wrong. The actual decison notes:
Redding was not physically touched in any way during the search, and she was not asked to remove her bra or underwear.
Read the thread.
Well then, stand up like a man, with that spine you don't have, look your interlocutors straight in the eye, and answer it. Double dare you.
What's disturbing? Wondering about what you have spent considerable time arguing is an appropriate act?
That's weak, even from you, Roscoe.
Judging by some of the strange fantasies posted on this thread, that's not the only place.
Read the post.
I am very afraid for your children. I have no fantasies about children & how you found my question to be such really makes me wonder just what your fantasies are about children are in general..You sure seem fine with them being forced to disrobe.
Freeper? Yes. Conservative? Not in anyone's wildest imagination.
Nazi terror tactics are not hallmarks of conservative thinking. Conservatives defend and protect children, not victimize them or defend their victimization.
I think your character assessment is correct, Andy.
As do many on here, unfortunately.
Could you repeat that in the form of a coherent question?
LOL
Source?
Besides your drug induced fantasies?
I did, and found the question to be quite reasonable. I was wondering the same thing. I can tell you that if some government flunkie did this to my daughter, he'd better have his head on a swivel for the rest of his natural life.
Yes you would & thats why my child will never be in a school where people like mojave & robertpaulsen can have any control over her.
I'm not. You don't know where I live.
Judging by some of the strange fantasies posted on this thread, that's not the only place.
Deflecting again eh? Here's another question in a series that you have skirted.
You haven't heard about the never ending conga-line of school administrators and teachers that have been charged found guilty of being child predators???
And these are only the ones that are caught. One can imagine how many are out there, the haven't been caught, or are being protected.
Watch the news, next week it will be another one, that just happened to get caught shaking down the kids for sex.
I think I’ve managed to shame them into pinging posters they attack, at least some of the time. It’s a step.
That is quite demonstrative of your convoluted logic. What point is there in pinging a dead FReeper? Also demonstrative of your consistent intentional ignorance of the point made in any given post to you. Why make an issue of an ad hominem directed at a former FReeper when I posted one directly at you? Because you don't have the courage or intelligence to respond directly back it appears.
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