New York City reaches $33 million strip search settlement

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

New York City settled a US$33 million (€24.3m, £21.8m) class-action lawsuit involving nearly 100,000 former and current prison inmates who were illegally strip-searched. This is the third strip-search court case in the past decade.

The plaintiffs included convicts who were charged with misdemeanors including trespassing, shoplifting, and failing to pay child support. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the inmates by the Manhattan law firm Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady. The lead lawyer, Richard Emery, said that "The city knew [strip-searching] was illegal in 1986. They said it was illegal and they stopped in 2002, and they continued to pursue this illegal practice without justification. We hope this settlement constitutes some semblance of justice."

The plaintiffs claimed that both men and women were strip searched, and forced to show their genitals to corrections officers. Woman who were menstruating were not excluded from this practice, Emery said.

One of the plaintiffs, David Sanchez from the Bronx, said that after he was arrested for a drug-possession misdemeanor, an officer forced him to "squat...grab my butt cheeks...run my fingers through my hair [and] through my mouth. I had to grab my genital area, and lift it for them."

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

Michael Schmidt. "City Reaches $33 Million Settlement Over Strip Searches" — The New York Times, March 22, 2010
Ailsa Chang. "City Agrees to $33 Settlement in Strip-Search Lawsuit" — WNYC, March 22, 2010
Adam Goldman. "NYC settles jail strip-search suit for $33 million" — The Washington Post, March 22, 2010

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License