A Las Cruces woman has been charged $1,122 by a local hospital for a forcible body cavity search ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency that did not turn up any illegal substances.
She is now asking the county to pay her hospital bill.
The woman, who is not being named because she was not arrested or criminally charged, was searched at Memorial Medical Center on July 1, according to a tort claim notice Las Cruces attorney Michael Lilley served to the county this week.
The woman is refusing to pay the $1,122 she was subsequently billed for the body cavity search, the tort claim notice shows.
Metro Sgt. Mike Alba said agents had “credible information from a reliable source” that the woman was concealing up to an ounce of heroin, leading to the search warrant from Magistrate Court. The woman, who has no criminal history in New Mexico, was in custody for several hours…
The county has a policy of not commenting on threatened or pending litigation.
Idiots. So much for what Las Cruces considers credible and reliable.
Thanks, Cinaedh
Anyone starting to get a 1938 Nazi Germany feeling here?
All you “Obamacare” nutjobs — stop talking out your butt. Read the ACTUAL legislation, don’t just spout what you heard from Rush or Fox. It makes you look stupid (ignorance is excusable, willful ignorance despite the facts is just stupid).
When are we going to admit defeat in the “war on drugs”? What has it accomplished besides filling the prisons to the burst point? Has demand for drugs diminished? Has the amount of money involved diminished? Has the level of violence at our southern border diminished? Is there ANY objective measurement you can point to that indicated any sort of “success”? At this point in any war, it is time to fire the Generals (DEA) and switch tactics. Otherwise we just continue to pour money and lives down the rathole, while we trample the freedoms of people like this poor victim. I would think all you TeaBaggers would be all about reining in the wasteful “war on drugs”, or is that just part of the towering mound of hippocracy you espouse?
For many of Americans, the Nixon Administration is ancient history, with only the vaguest association to something called “Watergate.” In fact, the so called “war on drugs” was started in earnest by Richard Nixon and then Attorney General John Mitchell. This was enthusiastically supported by conservatives who saw it as a way of protecting the “moral majority” from the nefarious influence of drug besotted hippies.
Agreed. End the war on drugs. We don’t need to pay to house a bunch of drug-addled hippies in a prison for years and years. Those of us who don’t take drugs don’t want to deal with the collateral damage in the drug war, never mind paying the costs.
Not only should this woman not have to pay for being groped, but she is entitled to a bit of money for her troubles.
Drugs are illegal to enforce scarcity – so that the government can profit from their own drug imports and make lots of money for their favorite black book projects.
It also gives the government an excuse to do pointless disgusting things like this. Way to go out-of-control oppressive government. Good job..
she should charge them
The officers and the judicial official who authorized the search should all be sued. Judges know full well that policeman are the most blatant liars in the United States and particularly New Mexico.
Let them all be hung by their balls until they are castrated and then put them in prison and make them pay at least 1M USD per person involved.
The law may be an “Ass,” but these law enforcement idiots are the toilet of mankind.