The news magazine show, 20/20, did a piece last night on what happened to a young woman, Louise Ogborn, while working a late shift at McDonalds.  This was a disturbing, indeed, sickening story about how a female manager at McDonalds forced an 18 year old employee to strip because of a telephone call from someone who pretended to be a cop.

This pretense went on for hours, and the female manager later had her fiance remain with the naked employee.  The fiance remained on the phone with the pretend cop, who told him to spank the naked employee and have her perform oral sex on him.  He complied.

This situation resulted in prosecutions and a civil case against McDonalds, where a $6.1 million verdict was returned.  If you want to see the most pathetically shocking reaction to this, see Overlawyered, where the victim in the post is McDonalds, which failed to train its personnel sufficiently to protect its teenage employees from strip searches, sexual abuse and humiliation.  Their take is worthy of a post in itself, as it is one of the most disgraceful and disgusting self-serving political perspectives that I’ve ever seen.  I just want you to know this.

This story started a conversation amongst my family.  How do we instruct our children so that they don’t find themselves in the same situation as Louise Ogborn?  I have an 18 year old daughter.  I will not put into writing the thoughts that run through my head if this had happened to her.  But the question was posed, what does one do when confronted with an order by police to strip?

This didn’t call for a lawyer response, but a human one.  Do I tell my daughter to refuse to comply?  I’ve written far too much about what happens to people when the don’t do as they are told by the cops to be naive.  They don’t care about what’s legal; they demand compliance with their command or they will use force and hurt you.  Perhaps kill you.  Police have guns, clubs and tasers.  Police have the support of the public and politicians.  If you refuse their order, you suffer monumental risk.  But what if they order you to strip?

Here, the order came over the phone from a sick fraud.  But the McDonalds manager believed the fraud to be a real cop.  It doesn’t matter that it was a fraud.  It matters that it was believed to be a cop, and that the 18 year old was subject to the command, as transmitted by an adult in a superior position from a person believed to be a cop. 

But what if it really was a cop who gave the command?  What if the cop was there in person, and gave the command?  What if the cop gave the command that this young woman perform oral sex?  That could never happen?  Nonsense.  Nonsense.  Nonsense.

The options are clear.  Comply and be subject to horrific sexual abuse and humiliation, or refuse and be subject to beating, physical abuse and possibly death.  This is what we are left with today.  No matter which way we turn, we are left with no option but to suffer.  We have given so much power to the police that we can no longer protect ourselves from the police. 

The rule of thumb that I taught my children was to comply with the directions of police first, and argue the point later, after the crisis is over.  But the lesson of Louise was too much to take.  Here I am, a criminal defense lawyer, fully capable of instructing my children on the applicable law and procedures that police should employ, when they are legitimated entitled to conduct searches, including a strip search.  And I cannot explain to them what to do when things don’t happen the way they are supposed to.  I cannot tell my daughter to comply with an officer’s demand that she undress in the back seat of a patrol car upon fear of beating or arrest to cover this diseased cop’s perverted abuse of power, or death.

What do I tell my daughter?  All you people who so dearly love police that anything they say or do must be complied with, or my daughter would deserve to die, tell me what I should say?  Would you still love them so dearly if it was your daughter?