Lawsuit: Chicago Cops Strip Searched Trio In Public, Forced Woman To Remove Tampon, Planted Drugs

Chicago Sun-Times
Feb. 05, 2014

Three people who claim Chicago Police strip-searched them in public and falsely accused them of carrying heroin during a traffic stop last year are suing the city, calling the officers’ actions “exceeding all bounds of human decency.”

[...]Police ordered them out of their vehicle and handcuffed Ford and Douglas, who had been driving, the suit claims. Officers opened both men’s waistbands and searched down their pants.

The suit alleges police then walked Douglas to a nearby house, handcuffed his wrist to bars on the home’s window, and pulled his pants to the ground while bending him over and searching his buttocks in the open air.

The plaintiffs claim police stopped when they saw neighbors looking, and then took all of them to an alley behind a church in the 9100 block of South Bishop Street, where they ordered Halley to remove her pants.

Halley claims she “pleaded” with a female officer not to, but that the officers made her remove her tampon and submit to a body cavity search in the alley.

A female officer searched her, while a group of male officers watched and “made jokes and comments about Ms. Halley’s body,” the suit claims.

The suit claims police found nothing illegal, but that the female officer reached toward her own sock and pulled out a small bag of heroin that she said she found in Halley’s waistband.

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