Pubdate: Wed, 29 Jan 2014
Source: Republican & Herald (PA)
Copyright: 2014 Pottsville Republican, Inc
Contact:  http://republicanherald.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1047
Author: Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
Page: 10

3 ENEMAS LATER, STILL NO DRUGS

If you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over
the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David
Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.

Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County,
N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and
was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession.

Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked
him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a
supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert
or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and
an officer wrote that Eckert's posture was "erect and he kept his legs
together."

That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs
internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital
emergency room and asked the doctor, Dr. Adam Ash, to conduct a
forcible search of his rectum. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.

Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call
but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn't actually
been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency
room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of
Eckert's abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were
found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.

Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel
movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a
lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second
enema was administered. Then a third.

The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert's searches
were public, the lawsuit says.

After hours of fruitless searches, police and doctors arranged another
X-ray and finally anesthetized Eckert and performed a
colonoscopy.

"Nothing was found inside of Mr. Eckert," the police report notes. So
after he woke up, he was released - after 13 hours, two rectal exams,
three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy.

The hospital ended up billing Eckert $6,000.

It seemed far-fetched to me. But a few days ago, the city and county
settled the lawsuit by paying Eckert $1.6 million.

A few months earlier, a man named Timothy Young who lives nearby says
that police officers pulled him over, forcibly strip-searched him in a
parking lot and then took him to a hospital for a forced X-ray and
rectal examination while he was handcuffed. Nothing was found, so he
was released - only to receive a hospital bill.

And a few weeks before Eckert's ordeal, a 54-year-old American woman
crossing from Mexico into El Paso was strip-searched and taken to the
University Medical Center of El Paso. She says in a lawsuit that she
was shackled to an examination table and subjected to rectal and
vaginal examinations - with the door open to compound her humiliation.
After a final X-ray and CT scan, all of which turned up nothing, she
was released - and billed for the procedures.

Police are caught in a difficult balancing act, and obviously the
abuse of Eckert isn't representative. But it is emblematic of
something much larger in America, a kind of inequality that isn't
economic and that we don't much talk about.

This inequality has a racial element to it, but it is also about
social class. This is about Americans living in different worlds.

So as we discuss inequality in America, let's remember that the divide
is measured in more than dollars. It's also about something as
fundamental as our dignity, our humanity and our access to justice;
it's about the right of working stiffs not to endure forced
colonoscopies.
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MAP posted-by: Matt