There was a time when this would have been beyond belief. But, after 7+ years of illegal christofascist junta rule in this country, nothing is. Still…
From the Albany Times-Union:
[Lisa] Shutter said she’d just finished some last-minute holiday shopping and became confused as she drove through West Hill looking for a friend she’d agreed to pick up that night.
Shutter was behind the wheel of a friend’s rented car, and said she saw the police car drive past her twice before the stop.
The officer at her window grilled her about drug use and hidden crack pipes, she said.
“You fit the profile,” the officer said, according to Shutter. “You’re a white girl in a rental car.”
Of course, it gets worse.
She told the officer she had no drugs and offered to take a Breathalyzer test, but he declined to give one, she said.
The officer then allegedly reached through her window and plucked Shutter’s cellphone from her lap.
He scrolled through the personal information in her phone, she said, asking questions about “private calls” and someone named “Mandie,” whose name appeared on her contacts’ list.
Mandie Buxton, 28, who is Shutter’s friend since childhood, was at home when her cellphone rang that night. The man calling identified himself as an Albany police officer and asked whether Shutter was supposed to be picking Buxton up that night.
“I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Buxton said. “He said: ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about?’ and then he hung up. I called right back and no one answered.”
Ordinarily, police need a search warrant to seize or access someone’s telephone.
I guess grabbing someone’s cell phone is one of the many things that law enforcement-oids can do now thanks to the (so-called) Patriot Act, etc.?
Before it was over, Shutter was ordered to stand outside her vehicle with her hands on the trunk. One officer searched her body while a second scoured the inside of the car. They also dumped the contents of her purse and asked whether she’d spent her money on crack because her wallet was empty.
Shutter said she never consented to a search of her vehicle, her telephone or her body. She said she pleaded with the officer who allegedly slid his hand down the back of her jeans, and inside her underwear, to stop.
“I kept saying over and over … ‘If you have to search me, can you bring me to the precinct?’ ” Shutter said.
A female officer was called to the scene and informed Shutter she was there to search her body, Shutter said. The female officer patted her down, lifted Shutter’s sweater and felt along her bra strap, and made Shutter open her mouth and lift her tongue. No reason was given.
The police found no drugs or other evidence of criminal wrongdoing before allowing Shutter back in her car.
“He said ‘you’re lucky’ … and that I better not drive around there again,” Shutter said.
Illegal brownshirt-esque thuggery from top to bottom – and if Ms. Shutter had defended herself in any way, she’d be gearing up for a decade or more in prison.
America.
I think I remember it.
