Our Top Three Enemies Are Drugs, Terrorism, and Human Dignity
Posted on | October 30, 2010 | No Comments
In 1991, a police officer in Wareham, Massachusetts thought a 14 year-old girl might be hiding some marijuana. So he told her to unbutton her pants, standing out in the open next to a cranberry bog, and he conducted a long and very attentive search inside her underwear. Going through the places where a dude might find contraband on a young adolescent girl, he also had her lift her shirt and open her bra. So thorough – one of those cops who puts a lot into the job.
Other officers and a sergeant looked on, close enough to hear the girl screaming and crying as Officer Scott Flanagan carefully checked her genitals for a threat to the community. They didn’t stop him.
A year later, in what seems to have been turning into a habit, Flanagan thoroughly searched another teenaged girl’s genitals for more drugs. Alas, this was finally a bridge too far, and Officer Flanagan ended up in prison for indecent assault on a minor and civil rights violations.
We know about these long-finished events because the sergeant who supervised the officer at both searches is a state representative in Massachusetts, and currently a candidate for a seat in Congress. Otherwise it would all be old business, long forgotten.
Similarly, we wouldn’t know about Savana Redding if her family hadn’t persisted in a long legal battle against the Safford Unified School District in Arizona. When Redding was 13 years old, administrators at her middle school suspected — on the unexamined word of another child — that she possessed “ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil.” So they did the reasonable and expected thing to protect children from such a dangerous and powerful narcotic: they had her take off her clothes and pull her underwear away from her body so they could take a careful look inside. No ibuprofen turned up. Another child saved from drugs, ladies and gentlemen.
At the end of the legal road, eight members of the United States Supreme Court concluded that the school district’s search had gone too far; the majority opinion pointed to “the degradation its subject may reasonably feel” as an argument against allowing such an intrusive act on so little cause. Just because some people in an office made a child show them her genitals — why’s everybody so sensitive these days? As Clarence Thomas helpfully explained in his dissenting opinion, “Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment.”
Man, where the fuck was Clarence Thomas when Scott Flanagan needed him? Do we want marijuana out there unrestricted near our cranberry bogs? Why are we second-guessing a police officer who had the sense to be really diligent?
So then this week, someone sent bombs in UPS packages from Yemen, apparently destined for synagogues in Chicago. Following a tip, possibly from the Saudi government, the cargo planes containing the packages were isolated and searched. The packages were recovered.
And so, wonderfully, we get this, as a local news story put it: “Friday’s UPS scare is prompting increased security measures at the nation’s airports. That could include newly introduced pat-down procedures.” See how bombs in shipping packages on a cargo flight lead to intrusive searches of passengers on commuter flights? The neat thing about working for the government is that you can just make shit up, and no one can stop you.
Anyway, about those newly introduced pat-down procedures: a CNN employee went through one this week to get on a flight at the Orlando airport after her underwire bra set off the metal detector. She says the screener “ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, buttocks and her inner thighs, and briefly touched her crotch.” (Personal to Scott Flanagan: the TSA is hiring!)
Afterwards, the searched passenger expressed her appreciation for the government’s efforts to keep her safe. “I felt helpless, I felt violated, and I felt humiliated,” she said.
Of course, some airline passengers won’t have to worry about being groped by a TSA flunkie, since many airports now have body-imaging x-ray machines that essentially let screeners look at your naked body without taking off your clothes. But they’ll totally be careful with it, and never abuse it. Except for when they make fun of people’s genitals.
Drugs and terrorism are awesome. Dear power-mad sadistic perverts who enjoy the sound of helpless weeping: be sure to thank your god of choice for these wonderful gifts, and get a government job as soon as possible. You’ll get a good paycheck, a nice pension, and you’ll work to protect people every day.
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