You’ll need to read this to believe it. David Eckert was pulled over leaving a Walmart parking lot at the first of the year in Deming, New Mexico. An officer ordered him out of the car and claimed he seemed to be “clenching his buttocks.” The rest has been verified by medical records:
- KOB TV4 — 1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.
- 2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
- 3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
- 4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
- 5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
- 6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.
- 7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.
- 8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.
Throughout the ordeal Ekert reportedly protested and never once consented to the invasive procedures to continue. Here’s the real punchline though: the hospital has billed him for the procedures and is threatening to take him to collections or court if he does not pay.
Eckert has filed a lawsuit against the city and the arresting officers. Those involved should be should be placed on leave without pay immediately while the facts are confirmed. Taxpayers should be furious, not only would this ugly practice clear the way for torture and humiliation on demand by any officer against any citizen at any time, the city will probably get the living shit knocked out of them if this goes to court. Better to get ahead of it.
WTFOMFG!
I see what you did there.
Speechless, literally speechless.
All I can figure is they realized they fucked up massively at the first exam and figured the only way out was keep looking in desperate hope that something would turn up to justify it.
It’s actually surprising that, after the second enema, the cops didn’t try to slip a balloon of heroin into the commode. “Eckert” doesn’t look hispanic, but was he Driving While Brown? I think we already have too damn many laws, but cases like this cry out for a new one, defining the circumstances under which abuse of police authority rises to the level of felony.
I’ve read that the search warrant itself was invalid, too.
Wow… They literally raped the guy with the doctors’ full cooperation (at the first hospital the police went to, the doctor they asked refused for ethical reasons).
Also, the search was carried out after the warrant expired and in the wrong county. The courts can be frighteningly deferential to the police (well, authority in general), so I hope that helps him… What are the odds of criminal charges?
I’m speechless. Wanted to make some kind of joke about “assholes” but just can’t find any humor in it.
Para 2:
Some media outlets oversell their reporting and manufacture huge controversies out of very little…then there’s KOB TV4.
What’s the opposite of hyperbole?
Uhh, Disgusting. I don’t know what else to expect though from a bunch of over zealous, ex-military, gung-ho, shitbags. When they told the officers that sometimes they will be wrong, and that is ok, This isn’t what they meant.
@9 AsqJames:
Hypobole?
So they drove an hour, to a different town, in a different county*, to get this exam?
*Deming is in Luna County, Silver City is in Grant County, and for some reason there were Deputies from Hidalgo County involved too.
Q1: Who the fuck do you think you are?
Q2: On what fucking planet is this acceptable behavior?
Q3: Are you really allowed to carry weapons or practice medicine?
Q4: What the fuck?
Q…
It sounds like the old story about China, killing a prisoner then sending the family a bill for the bullet.
Or if an analogy to murder is too strong a comparison, how about Florida’s failed drug testing of welfare recipients? The plan was to bill those people, and a corporation (partly owned by Florida governor Rick Scott) profited from doing the tests. Yeah, that definitely sounds like what happened to Eckert.
I hope the guy is awarded millions.
@9. AsqJames
Understatement.
Talk about shit treatment. No one should have to put up with that shit.
Lemme guess he was b–b-b-black?
That is appalling and I hope Ekert sues and takes them to the cleaners.
unfortunately, even if he were to prevail mightily in court, he won’t get much. Luna County is an impoverished little place in southern NM and Deming is the same. about 30 miles north of the Mexican border in the middle of nowhere, and treated as the deconstitutionalized zone by all the various coppage.
my hope is that the US atty picks this one up as a Sec 1983 prosecution; anything less won’t do anything to change the culture.
I read that the hospital referred the fees to a collection agency and want this guy to pay. I bet the hospital is not going to offer the man their PPO discount rate. But he should not have to pay: the hospital did this work on behalf of the police department, not for the police’s prisoner. They were not requested to do the procedure by an informed, consenting patient; they were talked into it (possibly threatened?) by the police. The hospital should sue the police department for costs, including their defense from the suit that the man should file against them.
The police officers should at the very least be dismissed from police work forever. Maybe they can drive tow trucks as part of a government-sanctioned car theft and recovery ring. (Me? Cynical? Nah.)
I wonder what the police are doing right now? Preparing a defense or searching for a tame judge?
The best bit has been left out. Guess who is being billed for this.
@Randomfactor(#6):
The warrant itself wasn’t illegal. The problem was more in how it was used. As in only valid in the county where the doctor said: “No way, this is unethical” not in the one where they got medical ‘professionals’ to cooperate in this. Oh and the limit on the validity of the warrant was 4 hours which was not quite long enough to get all these procedures done.
More info: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2013/11/do-not-clench-your-buttocks-in-deming-new-mexico.html
This is so fucking stupid, bizarre and vile has to be unbelievable. But sadly it is all too real. This reads like a bad comedy routine, only it is not funny at all. It is just sick. Sorry for the victim who must have felt like he was trapped in National Lampoon story from c. 1975.