Category: News

An independent city agency has found evidence suggesting that officers may frequently be conducting inappropriate strip searches.

Near the warren of cells that smelled of feces and vomit, the woman did not quite believe what was happening. She had been arrested in 2001 in Brooklyn on a minor charge and now, in a room with an open door, a police officer had asked her to strip naked and squat. “She used her finger to examine me internally,” the woman testified at a deposition. That same year, a Haitian man had been arrested for a misdemeanor because of a dispute with a tenant. He also said he had to remove all his clothes, this time in front of laughing officers asking him to bend down.

Class Action Strip Searches May Proceed

Toby Cohen had not committed a crime, but the freelance writer was packed off to Rikers Island one day two years ago in handcuffs and shackles. She was strip-searched and forced to shower in a cold stall, then subjected to a painful gynecological exam. That was followed by five days behind bars.

Five women who were arrested on minor offenses charge they were forced to strip and submit to gynecological exams at Rikers Island. “It’s degrading and it’s humiliating,” said Richard Cardinale, a lawyer who filed a class-action suit last week in Manhattan Federal Court on behalf of the women.

It’s Staten Island’s version of the Hatfields and the McCoys – and it’s about to become a federal case. For five years, there’s been no fence strong enough to make good neighbors out of housewife Rosa Moscova and Police Officer Martin Foley, who live across from each other on a quiet, leafy street in Dongan Hills.