Sunday, July 23, 2017

Black, Asian-American and Hispanic womenare three times as likely as men of the same race to be subject to strip-searches

See A Warrant to Search Your Vagina by ANDREA J. RITCHIE in the NY Times. She is a lawyer, a researcher in residence at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Excerpts:
"A Government Accountability Office report on contraband searches at airports, released in 2000, reflected another form of violation. Black, Asian-American and Hispanic women, it found, were almost three times as likely as men of the same race to be subject to humiliating strip-searches. Black women in particular were more likely than any other group to be X-rayed in addition to being frisked, though they were less likely to be actually carrying drugs. The report also mentioned instances in which travelers were subjected to body cavity searches and monitored bowel movements."

"Finally, there are the fatalities. While there are no official statistics on the number of women killed or injured in drug raids and arrests, the cases that have come to light give plenty of cause for concern. Some victims were mothers, like Tarika Wilson, shot to death by a SWAT team in 2008 in Ohio, as she stood, unarmed in a bedroom with her six children, holding her 1-year-old baby. Some were pregnant, like Danette Daniels, shot to death by a New Jersey police officer following a drug arrest. Some, like Frankie Perkins and Theresa Henderson, were choked to death by officers who believed — erroneously, it turned out — that they had swallowed drugs. In one case, a transgender teenager named Shelly Hilliard was brutally murdered after being set up by police as an informant."

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