The New York Times reports that girls as young as 12 have been stripped searched at music festival by Australian police eager to make drug arrests. Australia's zero-tolerance drug policy is “the only form of legislation that allows an adult to tell a young child to take off all their clothes,” Samantha Lee, the head of the Police Accountability Practice at the Redfern Legal Center, told the Times
From the article:
“It’s highly likely the vast majority of strip searches are being conducted unlawfully,” said Vicki Sentas, a senior law lecturer at the University of New South Wales who has researched strip-searching statistics.
In an inquiry conducted last month by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, a 16-year-old girl who attended a festival said she was asked to squat and cough in front of a police officer. She had no drugs.
“I could not stop crying. I was completely humiliated,” she said, according to her complaint. An officer who worked at the festival admitted that some of the searches he conducted may have been unlawful.
Mark Speakman, the state’s attorney general, said that strip searches in general were an “important investigative tool” but that the police needed to “get the balance right.”
Image: Pixnio
Hester Burkhalter (69) of North Carolina was arrested at Disney World in Orlando for having a small bottle of CBD oil in her purse. CBD is a non-psychoactive cannabis extract and Burkhalter said her doctor told her to use it for her chronic arthritis pain. Now she is suing the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and […]
The latest Gallup poll reveals that more Americans than ever support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. This is bad news for the private prison industry, which poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Trump’s campaign fund in the hope that weed foe Attorney General Jeff Sessions will lock up millions of mild-mannered dope […]
Johns Hopkins is among several institutions challenging a key tenet of outlawing psychedelics: that they have “no medicinal use.” Baltimore Magazine examines the progress made by key researchers Roland Griffiths and Bill Richards.
We’re living in the age of Big Data. As the driving force behind everything from Google’s famed algorithms to self-driving cars, massive sets of complex data can be found at the heart of some of today’s most exciting and important technologies. The Ultimate SQL Bootcamp Certification Bundle will give you the skills and tools you […]
So you missed Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Well, there’s one more holiday milestone coming up: Green Monday, on Dec. 16. It’s one of the busiest online shopping days for the simple reason that it will be 10 days before Christmas, which is when last-minute shoppers start to stress. Our advice? Don’t wait for that […]
Weighted blankets are officially a thing. And if you’ve ever tried one, you know there’s a reason for the fuss. Parents have known for generations that swaddling a baby has a profound calming effect, and the gentle pressure that blanket weights provide can have the same effect on restless sleepers. Pretty much all parts of […]
