I consider myself fortunate for having never seen a search warrant for a woman’s vagina. It’s hard to conceive what would be alleged that would make any sense to a rational judge. Assuming there was a snitch with proven reliability providing information that a particular woman regularly concealed narcotics in her vagina, it would fail to show probable cause that at any specific moment, there were drugs in there.
At the same time, it would seek an intrusion into a person’s body for a purpose that was, at best, trivial. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the information is accurate. This isn’t a dirty bomb about to kill thousands of people, and Jack Bauer has 24 hours to stop the killing. It’s drugs. If they remain where they are, they don’t harm anyone. Not even by the chaos theory employed by drug warriors to justify why drugs are literally violence.
If a person is dealing drugs, they eventually have to come out of a bodily orifice and be exchanged. Nail them, if you must. Society is saved and you get a medal. And not only did you pinch the dame for a more serious crime, but you didn’t have to take the deep dive.
Of course, if the woman doesn’t have drugs in her vagina, whether at all or at the moment you search, then cops didn’t get a free pass to intrude into a person’s body because a judge said so.
In the course of an op-ed about how throwback Drug Warrior Jeff Sessions and sick cops are awful, so that black women are most affected, Barnard researcher in residence Andrea Ritchie throws this bomb:
In 2015 Charneshia Corley was pulled out of her car at a gas station after a police officer claimed he smelled marijuana during a traffic stop. Two female officers then forced her legs apart and probed her vagina in full view of passers-by.
Three years earlier, two other black women, Brandy Hamilton and Alexandria Randle, were also subjected to a roadside cavity search by officers who claimed to have smelled marijuana. These incidents eventually prompted the Texas Legislature to pass a bill banning cavity searches during traffic stops absent a warrant.
You may now be asking yourself: Can police officers actually get a warrant to search someone’s vagina? The answer is yes.
These were both outrageous examples of something. And that’s where a divergence happens. For Ritchie, this was about law enforcement’s treatment of women, and black women in particular.
Critics of police violence and mass incarceration have rightfully shed light on the pain of families separated by long prison terms, of women torn from partners and children. But women’s suffering isn’t restricted to heartbreak: They have been raped, choked and killed, all in the service of public safety.
What is the point? Meteor strikes Earth, women and minorities affected most? Does Ritchie mean to argue that it’s horrible that cops can get a warrant to search a black woman’s vagina, but it’s totally cool to search a white woman’s vagina? Or a man’s anus?
The retort is that these practices affect black women more because of racism. That may well be true, but so what? If it’s bad when it happens to black women, is it not bad when it happens to anyone? If Ritchie’s contention is that we must do something to prevent it from happening to black women, she tacitly argues that it’s fine otherwise. Or is the solution to argue against the perpetration of wrongdoing for everyone?
Reading Ritchie’s op-ed, one would be unaware that this sort of thing happens to everyone. No, guys don’t have vaginas, but they do have anuses. And even kids have bodily orifices. It’s unlikely that Ritche would say that this is good with her, but then, this wasn’t of sufficient concern for her to expand her op-ed to all body cavity searches, regardless of gender or race. Or maybe she doesn’t care about cops performing digital searches on guys. Maybe she believes they’re privileged, so it serves them right to have to endure what women endure.
The unduly woke take a very different focus on these problems. They focus not on the wrongfulness of the act, but on the suffering of their favored victim. The unduly woke have informed me that their focus is true, that their favored victims suffer more or are invisible because they aren’t invariably the center of attention. At worst, what harm does it do?
The harm is that it misdirects attention from the problem, the fact of digital body cavity searches which would otherwise be rape, vaginal or anal, with all the ensuing horrors that accompany the crime of rape, and deflects attention to identitarian victimhood. At the same time, it pushes those who aren’t obsessed by social justice away from caring about the problem.
One might suspect that most people, regardless of race or gender, and more importantly regardless of their feelings about the police, would cringe upon learning that cops are raping people. It would outrage anyone to learn that judges are signing warrants to authorize cops to stick their fingers into vaginas and anuses because there might be some weed in there. They may not be fans of pot, but they aren’t huge fans of rape either. There’s a line, even if we can’t define it clearly, and this sort of search is too far on the wrong side of it.
Rather than create consensus that cops need to keep their fingers out of people’s vaginas and anuses, arguments like Ritchie’s turn it into a black woman problem.
If we could muster the consensus that no person should be subject to a digital body cavity search unless there’s plutonium in there about to massacre millions, perhaps judges will stop signing warrants to allow it, perhaps cops will stop doing it without a warrant on the roadside, perhaps no vagina or anus would be raped again in the name of law and order. That would mean black woman won’t have to endure the rape and humiliation that outrages Ritchie. Neither would anyone else. What’s wrong with that?
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If they’re invisible, police should just be able to see the drugs. Well, unless the drugs are invisible too.
This is how you want to start my week? Really?
Well, since McLeod started it, I have to say that you make a good case that the old-fashioned analog cavity searches were better.
Is this a conspiracy or a revolution? Do you hate me this much?
Can’t it be both?
I can’t even.
Clearly this is an issue of spin:
Cavity searches banned in nearly all circumstances; women and minorities most benefitted.
Just don’t tell the SJW’s it’s a principled stand.
If we ever get there, spin away. But first we have to get there.
“There’s a line, even if we can’t define it clearly, and this sort of search is too far on the wrong side of it.”
An interesting issue. It sounds like you are suggesting what amounts to a different standard for granting search warrants based upon what the sough-after contraband or evidence might be.
Cannabis? Sorry, no poking around will be permitted. A vial of anthrax? Knock yourself out. And it’s a yes/no deal: no sliding scale. Now, who gets to establish what various stuff gets the thumbs up or down (that may be a poor choice of metaphor)?
You gotta be a super-dyna-whoppin drug warrior to find no fault with a roadside probe for cannabis. I agree that’s beyond the pale. But just where does the pale sit?
Yeah, that’s why I wrote about that “clearly define” part. But the doctrinal basis is in there, Fourth Amendment has a “reasonableness” prong. It’s time to use it for good instead of evil.
SHG,
You write: “I consider myself fortunate for having never seen a search warrant for a woman’s vagina. It’s hard to conceive what would be alleged that would make any sense to a rational judge.”
Consider the following:
A dirt bag masquerading as a human being (with testicles) runs a reasonably large powder to crack operation located in K.C. Since he is also a pimp, he has access to women in a proprietary sorta way. Combining his two vocations, he hits upon a brilliant idea–using the women, branch out to the under served market in Omaha while avoiding pesky drug interdiction efforts.
Here is the outline of his brilliant idea: Have a dumb ass guy drive four women–one of whom has been held captive–back and forth from KC to Omaha. The women are both African American and Caucasian. The women have powder cocaine in their vaginas as they began their joyless travel from KC to Omaha. It will be rocked up at the end of the journey, but since crack penalties are worse than powder penalties the powder is transported rather than crack. A wire tap reveals that a run will be made on a date certain and other details about the travelers and the specific car are known in advance. Fill in the rest of the story as you think best.
Fun fact: The foregoing may have been the original idea for the Vagina Monologues. But, I can’t be sure.
All the best.
RGK
Option A: Separate trafficked women from dumb-ass guy, ask them if they have anything in their vaginas. They give it up immediately, then thank the agents profusely for saving them from a life of misery, offering them free sex in appreciation, which the agents duly refuse out of propriety and a concern for antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
Option B: Have random cops at roadside stick their fingers into sex slaves-cum-drug mules to save them from dirtbag who’s anus is nowhere to be found.
Option C: Track car, dumb-ass guy and poor women to Omaha stash house. Obtain warrant and take them down as they’re cooking up the crack. Added plus: get to snatch the cash from last batch (which may or may not make it onto the warrant return, because baby needs new shoes).
PS Vagina monologues are so transphobic, I’m literally shaking.
SHG,
Option D: Stop them on the road. Take them to the hospital. Remove the cocaine because if the cellophane ruptures they are dead. Turn them quickly with a threat of life plus cancer. Start them again on their journey. Then implement Option C.
All the best.
RGK
PS. I am not sure what transphobic means. But I’m pretty sure I like it.
Rape them for their own good makes it sound all warm and fuzzy.
Granted I’m not a lawyer, but to my eye, there seems to be a line somewhere between a) reasonably articulated suspicions that can support a warrant drawn from wiretaps that can be described in sufficient detail to a magistrate and b) the whiff of a beat cop supporting his assertion that there must have been pot up there.
Hey Judge, would you grant a no-knock warrant in the KC to Omaha scenario or should the cops at least have to offer an option to give up the goods first?
Keith,
I am very hesitant to answer a question, in this context, that revolves around the words “no-knock.” All the best.
RGK
You mean saran wrap right? Or were you always a cellophane guy?
Pretty sad.
If you didn’t know condoms have come a long way.
That being said. Safety is, as it always has been, a pretty weak argument even since the invention of the butt plug.
https://youtu.be/ZNXjsPJTKwE
Even if one were to believe that there is some merit to government anti-drug laws and their enforcement, this fails over the other options.
If you are serious about the drug laws, you follow them to the destination and get the local distributor as well. And, as noted elsewhere, the cops can reallocate any funds found.
There is no need to do what, absent a warrant, would be deemed sex bat in most states. Actually, I cannot see it as not being sex bat with a warrant; the warrant simply appears to allow it.
The warrant should be viewed as facially invalid. You cannot give a warrant to commit such an improper act and a police officer cannot rely on it. [Entick v. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (1765)].
This isn’t my father’s Nebraska.
Iris,
I bet your father kept his eyes closed. I tried that for a long time. All the best.
RGK
So when Compelling Necessity Takes a Field Trip not even the Gates of Labia can protect Liberty?
This is gonna seriously fuck up my Conquest, Empire, and Inquisition series.
Not even ping pong balls filled with napalm can save us now….
Wow! Tough crowd for a Monday!
Right?
I guess? Just burn the witch.
.
https://youtu.be/QZYOCJKI1i8
Excuse me….
More seems appropriate, don’t have the stomach for it.I
So all someone needs to do to smugle drugs is stick it inside them? If it’s in your pocket then you go to jail. If it’s in your ass, sorry sir you’re free to go.