For Women in Street Stops, Deeper Humiliation (about police pat-downs in nyc)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

This article addresses the issues women face with stop and frisks but I wonder how much worse it is for gender non-conforming women & transfolk

“A male officer should not have a right to touch me in any sort of manner, even if it’s on the outside of my clothing,” Ms. Galloway said. “We’re girls. They are men. And they are cops. It feels like a way for them to exert power over you.”

Crystal Pope, 22, said she and two female friends were frisked by male officers last year in Harlem Heights. The officers said they were looking for a rapist. It was an early spring evening at about 6:30 p.m. The three women sat talking on a bench near Ms. Pope’s home on 143rd Street when the officers pulled up and asked for identification, she said.

Connect with NYTMetro“They tapped around the waistline of my jeans,” Ms. Pope said. “They tapped the back pockets of my jeans, around my buttock. It was kind of disrespectful and degrading. It was uncalled-for. It made no sense. How are you going to stop three females when you are supposedly looking for a male rapist?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/nyregion/for-women-in-street-stops-deeper-humiliation.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hpw

[obamanut2012]

1. I was just coming to post this

I agree that male LEOs shouldn't be allowed to touch a female in anyway except for handcuffing. The control and power dynamic is way too skewed, and you also have to throw in trauma for sexual trauma survivors.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. hadn't even thought of that but really good point

[4th law of robotics]

3. Either public gropings by the police are wrong for everyone

or ok for everyone.

It really isn't fair to say only women are exempt.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. did you read the article? that's not what it's saying

it's saying that men groping women tends to induce fear in women, in a specifically sexual way and for very good reasons. while men do face sexual abuse, it is usually in the hands of other men and women constitute the large majority of people who are sexually abused.

this article merely add another layer of how this policy hurts society, in this case a specific population within society

[4th law of robotics]

5. Men can be abused too

often by older males in a position of authority (kinda like a cop).

So I could imagine this practice being equally traumatizing for a male victim of sexual abuse as it would be for a female victim of sexual abuse.

Additionally men can be raped by women (again, often an older woman in a position of authority). So a female cop groping a male isn't necessarily kosher either.

So like I said: it's either ok as a general practice or wrong as a general practice. You can't exempt people based on gender.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. no one is saying that women should be exempt

at best they are saying that women suffer more sexual trauma and that women cops should frisk women.

i personally cannot believe that stop and frisk is constitutionally sound at all

[obamanut2012]

7. I think stop and frisk is unconstitutional

However, as long as frisking is allowed, females should be frisked by females and men by men. I agree men have been sexually assaulted by men, but there is no other way to do this at this time. Maybe enough men will raise hell about stop and frisk, on this basis, so that it will get axed.

I have relatives and acquaintances who are LEOs, and when a female is arrested, she is ONLY searched by a female cop, even if it takes a while to have one on hand to do the search. This should be no different.

[4th law of robotics]

8. It probably is

but it still needs to be shot down.

And only allowing women to be frisked by other women means essentially that you will be giving women a pass most of the time (as there are very few female cops).

Frisking men more than women on a random basis would be profiling which is illegal.

[obamanut2012]

9. Too frigging bad -- they can hire more female cops

And only allowing women to be frisked by other women means essentially that you will be giving women a pass most of the time (as there are very few female cops).

[4th law of robotics]

10. They would have to start drafting them

very few women apply to become cops in the first place.

[obamanut2012]

16. Too bad, then

[LadyHawkAZ]

13. The NYPD has 34,500 officers

Slightly over 5000 of those are female. It's stretching the imagination to say that at any given time there is no female officer available. If there isn't one available, there shouldn't be a frisk. But then again, if there isn't probable cause, there shouldn't be a frisk, no matter the gender. Last time I looked, walking (or sitting or standing etc) was not considered probable cause under the law.

I think the NYPD have overstepped their constitutional bounds here. Again.

[4th law of robotics]

14. I agree that it is (or ought to be) unconstitutional

However if it is the law it should be applied uniformly.

And giving people a pass based on their gender is profiling.

Men get raped too. I would warrant that a man who was raped being frisked by another man would be equally traumatic as a woman who was raped being frisked by a man.

Should the police first ask if the person had been raped before frisking them?

[LadyHawkAZ]

15. No

but basic common sense says it ought to go gender-to-gender, for the sake of both parties.

Nobody's suggesting giving anyone a pass, I just showed that there is a sufficient force of female officers to do the job if the frisks are administered for-cause and not just at random, because the girls were Walking While Sexy. Given the recent behavior of the NYPD together with this article, it sounds like some of their officers are just straight-up perverts. Frisking women to look for a rapist? Did they think the girls had him tucked in their bra? Hogwash.

[obamanut2012]

11. LLP -- just saw this related article on my twitter feed

Quick Hit: The effects of stop + frisk on women
By Lori | Published: August 7, 2012

*Trigger warning* The linked article contains descriptions of harassment and unwanted touching.

Laws don’t always affect all people equally. People of color and LBGTQ people, for example, are disproportionately targeted by laws that criminalize carrying condoms as an (ineffective) way to prevent sex work. And we’ve documented how stop and frisk is executed along racial lines, and is way too harsh on people of color, including and especially LGBTQ blacks and Latinos (80 percent of those stopped by police and frisked for weapons have been black or Latino, and 90 percent were found to have done nothing wrong). But just because a law most heavily affects a certain population doesn’t mean that it only affects those people, or doesn’t affect another group differently. This excellent article — and by excellent I mean troubling — documents the experience of some of the 46,784 women who were stopped and 16,000 who were frisked in New York alone last year (guns were found in only 59 cases). In most cases, the people carrying out these stops and frisks were men, as more than 80 percent of officers on patrol are men in New York. From the article:

“When officers conduct stops upon shaky or baseless legal foundations, people of both sexes often say they felt violated. Yet stops of women by male officers can often involve an additional element of embarrassment and perhaps sexual intimidation, according to women who provided their accounts of being stopped by the police. And many incorrectly believe that the police, like Transportation Security Administration officers, are required to have female officers frisk women.”

Go read the whole thing. And join the movement against Stop+Frisk in New York. (hint: it’s working!).


http://feministing.com/2012/08/07/quick-hit-the-effects-of-stop-frisk-on-women/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[REP]

12. Women have the right to be frisked by a woman officer

In my hell-raising youth, I have made it known that I knew my rights and told the officer that it was illegal for him to touch me, and if they really wanted to search me, they could damn well get a woman officer (my offense at the time was being young, poor and living in a crappy part of town). I was not arrested for knowing my rights and demanding they be honored.

Now, of course, I would not consent to be searched - but at the time, I only halfway knew what to do.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. I think part of why theyre doing this is so they can continue to make pot posession arrests

Get suspects to expose the weed publicly, then they can arrest them.