Members of the activist group People Against Injustice were protesting the injustice of cavity searches on black men, which they say is an all-too-frequent occurrence. So why were they holding this banner?
Barbara Fair, a leader of PAI, called the rally for Friday evening — coincidentally, the very day that Police Chief Francisco Ortiz left the force — to protest the cancellation of a hearing that had been scheduled for April 3 for the Police Commission to hear a complaint from her nephew, Dramese Fair, about the strip search that he was subjected to last June. And just so everyone understood what “strip search” and “cavity search” really mean, she described how a police officer had allegedly put his gloved finger up her nephew’s rectum.
Fair (pictured) also said her daughter had witnessed a black man on the street enduring the same procedure. She had correspondence from an attorney representing other men who claim to have experienced it. She shouted, “I am outraged, and I said, ‘You guys have got to come forth and let them know what they’re doing to you.’ And the guys say they’re embarrassed. Well, you got to go beyond embarrassment when someone’s humiliating you like that.” She charged that in some cases the searches took place after a routine traffic stop.
She said the connection to the drug war is that’s the excuse police often use to carry out cavity searches. But, she added, subjecting someone to such an invasive and degrading procedure without a reasonable suspicion that the person has secreted drugs in his body is illegal.
Fair also said she was outraged that reporting on her nephew’s arrest identified him as a felon. Being a felon “does not take away his humanity,” she yelled. “He’s a human being first.”
The Rev. Donald Morris (pictured) of the Christian Community Commission, speaking in measured tones, said he was concerned with “a black man, or anyone, being taken anywhere where they’re secluded and be asked to take his pants down and have a cavity search. This is very, very inhumane, and we’re just out here today to say that won’t be tolerated.”
Sheldon Tucker, Fair’s son, (pictured with her, above), when prompted by his mother told the story of how he’d been stopped by police in the 1990s. Speaking calmly, he described how he was ordered to drop his pants and how officers pulled his underwear back and took a flashlight “and shined it all around my whole genital area, obviously looking for drugs. For the record, they didn’t find anything and they told me to go about my business.”
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said in Dramese Fair’s case, investigators needed more time, and that the hearing would be rescheduled, but gave no date. The police say they do the searches to see if suspects are hiding drugs.