Strip searching a 13-year-old girl was “reasonable” and not “excessively intrusive,” a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court ruled last year.
In the school nurse’s office, (Savana) Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear. She was then commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear out at the crotch, exposing her pelvic area. The strip search failed to uncover any [drugs].
Redding, an honor student with no record of drug use or behavior problems, had been accused by a classmate, who’d been caught with prescription-strength ibuoprofen pills similar to Advil tablets. Ibuprofen is the drug of choice for teenage girls with menstrual cramps.
In a letter to her local newspaper, Redding writes that she still feels shamed by the strip search more than four years later. She tried counseling but it didn’t help.
The case goes before the full court, which will be asked to reconsider, on March 24.
We can only hope that the full court will correctly rule that this *was* excessive, thereby saving the Supremes from the hassle of overturning the 9th Circuit yet again.
Can’t you get the same result of prescription ibuprofen by taking 4 regular ibuprofens?
Insane. School officials should have to be subjected to a full body search by a prison official every time they do this to a kid and don’t find drugs.
Funny, if someone working for the school did this without looking for drugs, it’d be a sex crime. Too bad these creeps won’t end up on a sex offender registry somewhere…
Reason #385343664 to homeschool.
Wait, it’s temporarily illegal to homeschool.
Wait, it’s temporarily illegal to homeschool.
Only in California. Homeschooling remains legal in the other49 states.
Half Canadian-
I know in the schools I’ve taught in it doesn’t matter if the drug is prescription or over-the-counter, they’re all treated as illegal substances in school. I coach wrestling and there are a lot of sore muscles and joints during day-long tournaments. If a wrestler asks me for some ibuprofen I usually respond in a loud voice that I can’t give them or allow them to take anything in my presence… hoping that some of the parents or older wrestlers nearby hear and take care of the situation.
And as for the strip-searching, the vice-principal is a pervert, plain and simple.
I don’t say this to defend the school, but just to set the record straight: the young woman was searched in a locked room by two women. According to the court case, the vice principal was not in the room at the time of the strip search.
It sounds crazy, but isn’t the whole drug war crazy? Didn’t we learn anything from prohibition?
Zero tolerance yet absolute authority? If a search was needed, police should have conducted it. Why not call in the janitor? At the very lest, no more teaching for those three.
Cardinal, as I read it the vice principal, who is female, was in the room along with a female secretary.
Walter’s right: if a school official believes there’s probable cause of the commission of a crime, then they should call the police, who actually know how to properly deal with such things. They should not be in the position of investigating on their own.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that she DID have drugs on her. Can you say “motion to suppress”? Thanks, school officials: you’ve both humiliated your student AND lost the criminal case simultaneously.
In the actual case, it says “Wilson [the vice principal] then showed Redding [the student] the pills he had seized…. Wilson then asked [Helen] Romero [his administrative assistant] to take Redding into the nurse’s office and conduct a search of her person.”
As I read it, Wilson, the vice principal, is male. He asked his administrative assistant, a woman, to search the student.
You’re right, Cardinal. Kerry Wilson is a man. He searched the girl’s backpack, finding no drugs, and then asked his female admin to do the strip search in the nurse’s office.
“It sounds crazy, but isn’t the whole drug war crazy? Didn’t we learn anything from prohibition?”
Yeah, they learned that you have to browbeat the majority of people into believing drugs are wrong so they’ll roll over and accept the cost of the debacle. They’ve learned, and the lessons are bad for us all.
Possession of ibuprofen is not a crime. Why would the police bother to show up?
Someone overheard someone else saying that a 3rd person might have seen the principal take an aspirin. That is obvious probable cause to strip-search the principal. Let’s do that in front of the entire student body - to ensure we have zero tolerance for drugs.
I believe that the courts have ruled that while police have to abide by a standard of probably cause, school personnel may conduct searches based on a lesser standard of reasonable suspicion. Although that does raise the question of suspicion of what–aspirin? acetaminephen? midol??
That makes me sick. The more I think about the rights that teachers wish they had in school, the more I see these situations and realize why we have some of these decisions in place. Freakin’ Advil. Sick.
Why not tell these people and organizations how you feel?
Vice Principal Kerry Wilson
Principal Robert Beeman
Superintendent Mark Tregaskes
Safford, Arizona Middle School
734 11Th Street
Safford, AZ 85546
Phone Number: (928)348-7040
http://az.localschooldirectory.com/schools_info.php/school_id/3495
This kind of thing (along with principals molesting kids, school buses flying off cliffs or wrecking, drugs in middle schools, & kids not being watched in general) is the reason I home school my two boys. If they are in my care at all times, nobody can harm them. More parents should start taking care of their own kids. Home schooling was the way to do it 200 years ago, so what’s wrong with it now?