Strip Search Epidemic Continues

Regular readers may remember my November 5, 2002 column about a young lady McDonalds employee in Roosevelt, Utah who was strip searched by her manager. In that case, the manager was acting on the telephone instructions of someone posing as a police officer accusing the employee of theft.

The point of that column was that various school and other policies are conditioning our young people to accept violations of their rights, including the right to privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. To quote the column, "If the courts proclaim that fear of student drug abuse justifies random locker searches and drug testing, who is to say that an accusation of theft doesn't justify a strip search? If the courts allow police officers to stop drivers at random to check for alcohol use, why wouldn't others in authority feel justified in limiting the right of privacy of those under their control?"

Recent news stories show that incidents similar to the one in Utah have become a nationwide problem. Fast food restaurants and other businesses have been receiving calls from fake police officers, ordering managers to strip search employees. Some of the managers have gone to the extreme of performing "body cavity searches." Recently a similar assault was made against a 17-year old high school girl who was eating lunch at an Arizona Taco Bell during her spring break. This is the first report I've heard in which the victim was not an employee of the business.

In many cases, the police have referred to the managers who received the phoned instructions as "victims," just like the people they had searched. As a result, no criminal charges are filed. Typically the victim sues the business and the manager, receiving settlements of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

There are so many things wrong with this strip search epidemic that it's difficult to know where to start listing them; but I'll try. First, managers who cooperate with anyone demanding that an employee or customer be searched at all, much less strip searched, are guilty of serious crimes: kidnapping, for starters. Some cases, like the one at the Arizona Taco Bell, are at least gross sexual assaults and might even be considered rapes. There should not be any question of victim status for these managers. They belong in jail along with others who commit similar crimes without the excuse of a bogus call from police. These actions are not merely civil matters; they are serious felonies.

The businesses who so poorly train their managers that they will commit felonies in the course of their duties need to be hit with much more serious penalties. The awards to the victims should be large enough to affect the bottom lines of these companies and rouse their stockholders to demand management changes. Charges of criminal negligence against upper management may even be justified.

One of the things that disgusts me about much of the reporting and commentary on the incidents is the assumption that it makes a difference that the calls are not from legitimate police officers. Yes, I agree that everyone should know that police officers don't order people to perform strip searches over the phone, so the managers should know that the orders are not coming from the police.

But the implication is that if it had been a police officer, the manager might be excused for obeying the orders. No, no, no, no, NO! The involvement of a police officer would have made the crime even less excusable. It would have added a Fourth Amendment violation on the part of the police department.

As I said in my previous column, the problem is that many of our citizens, including these victims and those who assaulted them, don't have a sense of what rights we all have. The constant chipping away at the Fourth Amendment by the courts is taking its toll. The courts allow random drug testing, sobriety checkpoints and various other warrantless searches. How is an ordinary person to know what searches the courts will allow this week?

This would be a good time for parents and schools to start a "Bill of Rights Awareness Month." The Fourth Amendment activities would include reading and discussing how a "reasonable search" is defined: one that is performed after a court has issued a search warrant specifying, among other things, the reason for suspicion that the person being searched has committed a crime.

If all of our citizens understood the extent of the protection afforded them by the Constitution, incidents like these strip searches would be impossible. Better yet, we would stop meekly accepting Supreme Court decisions that whittle away at that protection.