The typical subject of a questionable strip search is "the African American teenage male brought in on loitering" charges, said attorney Charles J. LaDuca, one of the lawyers suing Philadelphia. Lawyers for both sides are discussing a possible settlement. ...
Until October, though, Philadelphia's prisons were strip-searching all new inmates, more than 30,000 every year - even people arrested on charges as minor as disorderly conduct. After a civil-rights lawsuit, the city adopted stricter regulations.
The Delaware County jail, now run by a private firm, strip-searches thousands of inmates annually, regardless of charge, according to three current and former guards. County officials would not talk about the strip searches; neither would executives from the company, the Geo Group of Boca Raton, Fla.
The Inquirer found similar practices in some police departments. Darby, Chester and Erie police routinely strip-searched people detained in their lockups on minor offenses such as disorderly conduct or public drunkenness, records and interviews show. And the Pottstown police chief, Mark Flanders, said blanket strip searches were still the rule in his jail.
Stripped of their rights
Pennsylvania jails have been strip-searching thousands of people detained on minor charges, often without legal justification. It could cost taxpayers millions.
By Mark Fazlollah and Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writers
Tameka Flythe was arrested by Darby police as she walked home from a pickup basketball game in Philadelphia. Strip-searched on an officer's suspicion that she might have drugs, she was released without any charges being filed. No drugs were found.
"It was almost like being raped," she said.
In Harrisburg, Devon Sheppard, a biophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, was arrested for attending an outdoor party that didn't have a city permit. She was jailed and given a body-cavity search when she couldn't come up with bail money, $1,051 in cash.
"I'm sure there are places where this happens regularly," Sheppard said. "I just didn't think the United States was one of them."
And in Philadelphia, former schoolteacher George L. Byrd was arrested when he was on his way home from a party for his niece and charged with drunken driving. Unable to post the $2,500 bail, he was taken to a Philadelphia prison and stripped.
Afterward, he said, he went to an empty prison cell, and "I stayed there and cried."
