:eek: Wow. I was skeptical when I saw the story on NY Daily News. So I found the local news story. This actually happened in America. I’m not sure who is worse. The cops or the medical professionals that went along with it.
This wasn’t even a normal traffic stop. This guy was pulling out of a Walmart parking lot. Rolling stops are pretty common if theres an obvious break in traffic.
What confuses me is the extreme tests. Even if the guy was hiding drugs they’d be easily found with the x-ray and finger probe. All that other stuff was just sadist and spiteful.
This is different from the pit thread. I was hoping we could calmly discuss it.
There are some significant issues with medical ethics to consider. Why would doctors even do this for the cops? The first ER doctor refused and they went to a second hospital.
I would hope more than lawsuits come from this. These doctors and nurses need a review by their medical boards. This guy was given an anesthetic against his consent. This case could cost some people their medical licenses.
And the hospital billed him for all those procedures and has threatened to take him to collections if he doesn’t pay. Crazy! It’s like everyone involved wants to get sued for millions of dollars.
Incredible, maybe there is a lot more on why they suspected he had drugs. At least doctors were involved instead of the anal probing being done on the side of the road. That has happened too.
I just posted this in the pit thread, but for the sake of conversation - Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar thinks there’s problems (I mean, more problems) with the warrent:
I hope so, all the way up to the chief of police and county sheriff.
Sometimes in these cases of wrongful action by police we will eventually be treated to some self-serving “explanation” of why the action was justified.
In this case I can’t imagine anything they could say that wouldn’t just make matters worse, except “we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
Oh, and I would like to say that this sort of thing, by itself, reflects everything that is wrong with the “war” on (some) drugs.
Roddy
Search warrants are very specific. Sometimes they even restrict what can be searched. They have time limits.
I just can’t understand why a judge would sign a warrant for an invasive body cavity search on such flimsy evidence. No drugs found in the car. The x-ray was enough to confirm the guy hadn’t swallowed a balloon with drugs. They just went way, way beyond any reasonable search.
The first hospital the doctors took the man to recognized that the search was unethical and refused to comply. The police then took the man to the hospital in question where they performed the above tests. The first doctor is willing to testify on behalf of the defense.
It’s terrible what happened to Eckert. In this case heads will roll. What possible justification is there for repeated enemas? When has a colonoscopy every been ordered to search for drugs?
This story is very disturbing just on the surface, but note that the incident happened more than 10 months ago and it is just now making the national news.
10 months. That is astounding to me. I wonder if there were any efforts made to pay the victim off. If this were a TV or movie, then the victim wouldn’t have lasted for ten months.
Normally these kinds of stories bother me, but this one is beyond the pale.
If this happened to one person, I am pretty doggone sure it has happened to others.
Is this kind of abuse actually increasing in probability, or is it an artifact of ubiquitous news coverage? If the latter, I would have expected a swifter reporting of this crime (and a crime it is most certainly, if the facts are as they are presented).