Australian Police Willing To Leer At As Many Naked Teen Bodies As It Takes To Stop Drug Overdoses
Sexually scarring children with unnecessary strip searches to prevent them from committing misdemeanors
Australia's war on drugs has led to the repulsive but perhaps inevitable spectacle of cops leering at the bodies of girls as young as 12.
Data released last week about police tactics in New South Wales, provided in response to a records request by the Redfern Legal Centre, show that law enforcement's obsession with stamping out drug use at outdoor festivals has produced a twentyfold increase in strip searches over the course of a decade. They have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last four years. And most of the time, the cops are finding nothing.
According to the date, nearly two-thirds of the 5,400 strip searches performed by New South Wales police from 2017 to 2018 found absolutely nothing. In the past three years, more than 600 people under 18 were subjected to police strip searches. Three of them were 12 years old. Seven were 13.
More than 90 percent of these strip searches stemmed from suspicion of illegal drug possession. The New York Times and The Guardian both report that festivals in New South Wales are now thick with police and their dogs sniffing around for drugs—and, apparently, for reasons to look inside young people's underwear.
The Guardian details the story of one 19-year-old man's strip search. It'll sound familiar to anybody who has experienced or read about America's sorry handling of people who police suspect of getting high‚and about our overdependence on the flawed noses of drug-sniffing dogs:
"I knew I didn't have anything on me, no drugs or anything, so it was no problem," [Camille Elies] says.
"But then the dog started sniffing around the car and she started saying 'you look a bit nervous mate, you look nervous, if you have drugs on you then you might as well tell me now or I'll take you to the strip-search tent and we'll find them that way.'"
Elies says the officer started recording him using her body-worn camera. While he continued to deny he had any drugs, she continued to press him on why he looked "nervous".
"I said, 'because you are interrogating me and you have the dog there.' She was being so rude about it as if I had done something wrong already," he says.
Elies was eventually strip searched in a makeshift tent. Two male officers instructed him to lift his shirt, drop his pants and hold on to his genitals while they "walked around" him.
"I was a bit shook up," he says. "I don't know. I just, yeah, I was shook up by it to be honest."
These intrusive searches are supposed to be justified by a recent increase in deaths by festival attendees who had taken MDMA. New South Wales has seen six such deaths in the past year, as opposed to 12 in the entire prior decade. But there are other, better methods of dealing with overdose deaths. New South Wales' deputy coroner, Harriet Grahame, argues that the police presence actually increases, not decreases, the likelihood that somebody will get hurt. She'd rather introduce pill testing at these outdoor festivals so that people can check to make sure their MDMA is safe. After all, overdose deaths frequently happen not because people have taken too many pills, but because they aren't aware that the pills have been adulterated, often with fentanyl, or because the drugs are much more powerful than they realize. Drug-testing stations would help users make sure they're not taking something that will kill them.
Unfortunately, many public officials are standing fast. Here's how New South Wales's police minister, David Elliott, defends the police practice of leering at teens' naked bodies:
I've got young children, and if I thought that the police felt that they were at risk of doing something wrong, I'd want them strip-searched.
One wonders what his children think about that.
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why does David Elliott hate his children?
Leering ?
I am pretty sure the law itself does not say that as Reason implies
leering
/ˈliriNG/
adjective
looking or gazing in a lascivious or unpleasant way.
“every leering eye in the room was on her”
Note, lascivious OR unpleasant. So I’d say leering fits.
The law doesn’t require leering. But it’s still an option.
AT RISK OF doing something wrong! Who isn’t?
Well, let’s get those clothes off then!
Australians, as it much of the world, are increasingly inured to government intrusion. And on it goes, literally. This is what we can expect here if we do not stand fast [that is not a exclusive endorsement of the Navy on Veterans Day, by the way; here’s to ALL veterans].
It’s Australia – the western world’s second biggest nanny state only just behind Scotland. This is just ‘situation normal’ for them.
Unfortunately the muppets in charge of my state seem to think that this is worth emulating.
Or they could…and I know this sounds crazy…legalize drugs so people can buy safe properly dosed party favors?
Blasphemy!!!
/sarc
Fuck that, those loosers should just drink alcohol not “do drugs”. And what would the dealers do if drugs were legalized? Did you even think of them? Wont someone, pease, think of the dealers?
Just pretend the cops are illiterate Mexican drug mules and you’ll feel all better.
Illiterate Mexican drug mules are strip searching children now?
In related news, Jeffery Epstein is now working for the New South Wales PD.
So I guess Epstein really didn’t kill himself?
Elvis and Tupac helped him fake his death, they’re all roommates now.
No, Epstein was killed (not by Epstein himself), but by Trumpistas, who had heard lies about how Epstein was planning to “spill all of the Epstein’s -beans” about how Trump and His Trumpistas were TOTALLY willing to DISTRACT the nation’s attentions away from Trump’s Machiavellian machinations vis-a-vis Ukraine, towards investigating, instead, the UGLY and HIDEOUS nose hairs of Hunter Biden!
So… “Pay NO attention to the UGLY and HIDEOUS affairs of Trump, which are hidden behind the curtain! Pay attention, instead, to the UGLY and HIDEOUS nose hairs of Hunter Biden, which DO NOT reside behind our Republican curtain!”
Bill Clinton had far more contacts with Epstein than Trump.
Tricky,
It wants cake. Don’t even look at it.
Who said anything about Bill Clinton? Being less of a creep than Bill Clinton isn’t much of a standard.
Media Matters should get its fifty-cents back from Mary.
1. Pretty sure Trump’s sexual peccadillos are all well known and;
2. If Hunter Biden was a Pence he’d already be in jail.
I get that you have to sex these stories up a bit. But just the searches are outrageous enough
“” I’ll take you to the strip-search tent””
Heads perk up at the TSA office.
“One wonders what his children think about that.”
Actually, I am pretty sure I know what his kids think about that.
Cops gotta Pedo.
Instead of paying police officers, they should just ask for volunteers from the community. “Hey, who wants to look at naked teenagers?”
Forget asking for volunteers. That’s what they already put in their employment ads!
The deaths are most likely not due to overdoses and more likely due to be dehydration.
That is likely. But a lot of “ecstasy” is faked or adulterated with various stimulants and narcotics.
For what its worth….
This story and the creepy cop “father” quote made the 6 pm network news here across the ditch (in New Zealand, if you dont get that bit of slang). The more that these sorts of stories get out (thanks to everyone having a small, excellent video camera on them 24/7) the more likely it is to end. Hopefully.
NZ may, possibly pass safe drug testing laws (if the coalition govt can agree among itself) quickly before the “music festival season” starts. As if if thats the only time its needed, but great if it does happen. Disclosure, i have never taken pills recreationally.
“Hmm…you look nervous…what are you hiding?”
“That’s funny, you’re abnormally calm for someone being interviewed by police…you’re cool as a cucumber. Such unnatural behavior is quite suspicious…maybe you’re on drugs?”
cutecumber
this sounds crazy
Hmm… awesome.
I am moving to Singapore. An evergreen natural friendly location condo location.
https://www.daintrees-residence.com/
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