The small City of Deming, New Mexico (2010 pop. 14,855) has agreed to pay $1.6 million to a man who had been the victim of what reporters at KOB Eyewitness News 4 in Albuquerque described as “a humiliating violation of [his] body by police and doctors.”
Last November, we covered how, what, at most, was a routine traffic stop for an alleged failure to yield upon exiting a Wal-Mart parking lot, turned into an indescribably invasive, fourteen-hour ordeal for the man who was pulled over…
Based upon nothing more than what proved to be an unfounded suspicion that 63-year old Dennis Eckert was concealing narcotics — a suspicion that allegedly arose because, according to police, Eckert appeared to clench his buttocks while obeying a command to exit his car — Deming police officers obtained a warrant for an anal cavity search, transported Eckert to the Gila County Regional Medical Center, and compelled him to undergo multiple medical procedures without his consent.
After an x-ray failed to reveal any narcotics, Eckert, on two occasions, was subjected to rectal probes by a doctor’s finger. This was followed by three enemas in which Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police and to watch while doctors searched his stools. Following a second x-ray, Eckert was compelled to undergo surgery, to wit, a colonoscopy in which a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were ever found.
The hospital later billed Eckert $4,539 for the procedures he had never authorized it to perform.
Eckert then filed a civil rights complaint in a U.S. District Court. That suit has now been resolved by way of a settlement in which the City of Deming will pay Eckert $1.6 million — ending this extraordinary chapter in the farce that is known as the “War on Drugs.”
Any chance any of the authorities have learned a thing from this? Do the doctors still have their licenses? The complaint is even worse than what you’ve written here and previously.
He was not a victim of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, BUT he was within 100 miles of a US border, including all coastlines, which has quietly become a ‘Constitution-Free Zone’.
This could happen to ANY of the 197 MILLION people that live in that area (really) and those traveling through. Deming is on I-10.
Homeland Security Assuming Broad Powers__ACLU-2008
“We don’t need a warrant” was the response of a CBP officer to a Texas woman assaulted similarly returning from Mexico. The story of a lawsuit over a 2012 search implies this is becoming SOP!
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge prohibited this procedure with considerable outrage. The Sixth Circuit is Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.
This done for a drug mule caught and now needing to eliminate the lethal drugs inside, fine.
For anyone else this is a totalitarian outrage.