There is a shocking lawsuit filed against the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department in Florida in which Leila Tarantino claims that she was pulled over for going through a stop sign and then stripped searched by the side of the road in front of her children.
Tarantino says that she was pulled over last July for allegedly rolling through a stop sign. She claims the officer immediately pulled his weapon and pulled her from the car without explanation or warning. She says that she was left in the back of his squad car for two hours and then strip searched by the side of the road in full view of bystanders. She further claims that a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from her during the strip search. She claims that there were five male officers and one female officer.
The civil action suit is against the government of Citrus County, Florida, Sheriff Jeffrey Dawsey and six unnamed police officers.
This is one of those cases where only a fraction of the allegations would need to be proven to make for an outrageous case. A strip search by the side of the road is itself a gross violation of standard procedures. We have not however heard from the officers or the department. They may contest that this was an actual strip search and contest the specific graphic details of the complaint below.
The long period of detention and lack of charges however raise serious questions regarding the basis for holding Tarantino. She was released with only a citation.
Here is a copy of the lawsuit.
Source: RT
Kudos: Catherine Maloney
bettykath, People who know me, which includes no person here, get frustrated w/ me when I offer no opinions regarding ongoing cases. And, I’m often asked for my opinion. Like this civil case in Citrus County, I prefer to wait for the case and facts to evolve. I apologize to you and all impatient folks for not making instant or partial judgements. I am a patient man in an increasingly impatient culture. I still look upon patience as a strength, realizing full well most look upon it as a weakness.
*spin-elli
No need. Your responses are one dimensional rants and full of contradictions. You demand from others that which you are, yourself, incapable of giving and quite naturally fail to see the flaws within both your arguments and your presentation.
According to you:
Gene is emotional and works at 7-11 and thinks he’s Jesus and psychic
Woosty is Oliver Stone
pollyannacurmudgeon thinks DUI’s are minor infractions
Malisha is in wonderland
shano is a cop hating ilk
Rickad needs evening meds
And you’ll do a mea culpa only if everybody else apologizes first.
Professional curiosity led you to trash the plaintiff? That’s what you tell yourself.
I won’t even bother reading you again.
nick, sling’s analysis: http://zimmermanscall.blogspot.com/
another thread misnamed “Report: Zimmerman Passed Lie Detector test”
nick,
Oooooo. P.I. Appeal to your own authority (such as it is) much? I’m so . . . not impressed. Who am I? You aren’t much of a P.I. if you haven’t figured that out, genius. Here’s hint: What Makes A Good Law, What Makes A Bad Law?
Thanks for your explosive outburst though.
Very informative and illustrative.
Of what exactly I’ll leave up to the reader.
nick, if i may answer for malisha, there are 3-4 threads on this blog about Zimmerman. Use the search function above. A tremendous amount of material has been released – Zimmerman’s statements to police, Zimmerman’s walk-thru, police reports, a video of Zimmerman’s voice stress test, witness statements and audio recordings.
sling has done a great job of analysis, most particularly of Zimmerman’s call to the police non-emergency number and his walk-thru.
One of the threads is “New evidence in Zimmerman case” Near the end of the comments, sling has a pointer to the analysis.
shano, Do you hate the cops who got a confession from the subhuman in KC. They must have beat it out of him,right? Your ilk hate cops until they pull your ass out of a wringer. Again, I know more about the abuses of cops than most of the idealogues here. They are not saints, nor are they satan. They are us, flawed human beings.
shano, Rape? Really? Then why just file a civil suit? Rape is a felony. The smart legal move would be to get a rape conviction or plea and then file the civil suit.
Malisha, I seed you have all the facts on Trayvon Martin also. Where do you enlightened folks get all the facts us poor folks don’t have? Wonderland?
Gene H, May I call you Jesus, or just Son of God. My experience is the sanctimonous never “back off” and incredibly they double down on 14[a blackjack reference]. You still haven’t answered my quite basic question regarding your expertise. Does working @ a 7-11 give you credibility, or just free Big Gulps? I did not “IMPUGN” the plaintiff’s character, I simply directed people to a govt. website that would provide insights into her background. The facts speak for themselves. You however have no problem impugning the cops in this case w/ no facts in eveidence. Gene H, I provide my complete name and folks can research me. I live in Wisconsin. I’m a licensed PI. In the words of the WHO.. “Who the F$^K are you?” I give my full name and I stand by what I say.
Rickad, When you form complete thoughts I’ll respond further to you. Remember to take your evening meds.
About attacking this plaintiff’s “parenting skills” — it’s par for the course. When any mother is victimized or attacked in any way for any alleged misdeed, her “parenting skills” are in the “fair game for all adversaries” bucket. It’s just the way mothers are seen in this culture: Either you’re perfect in every way (all the patriarchs love you and you love all of them, for starters) or you’re a “bad mother” as in “Baaaaaaad Mother.”
The same goes for young thugs like Trayvon Martin. Once somebody allegedly murders you, anything you have ever done or were alleged to have done in any way that was considered imperfect in any way is proof positive you were a thug who needed to be killed in the defense of the good people who want a good world to live in.
Roberts.
Meh.
And to think I used to think we couldn’t do any worse than Rehnquist and then along comes Roberts (and Scalia and Thomas) to prove that old adage about things can always get worse.
*spin*-elli’s lame justification for trashing the plaintiff: “They made me do it!”
*Being a formerly good Catholic boy I will say a perfect act of contrition for mentioning the plaintiff’s background. It was professional curiosity. But first, I need the folks who have already ruled in the palintiff’s favor to back off. Then my mea culpa.*
idealist:
“Excuse my ignorance. Do all felony stops mean strip searchs in public, including body cavities?”
********************
No. However the Supreme Court in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, 566 U.S. ___ (2012), ruled that strip searches were permissible in jail settings even if the defendant was charged with a minor crime to protect jail officers and to prevent contraband. A perfectly dastardly decision in my opinion which gave constitutional sanction to a practice that was far from universal. Armed with this fear-based constitutional ruling some authorities are taking the matter a step further and conducting strip searches in the name of officer safety. I think this is what may have happened here. Welcome to civil rights under the Roberts Court.
I am late to this party, but I have to agree with Mespo and Gene. Remind me to stay out of Florida and Texas. The list is getting longer.
“Being a formerly good Catholic boy I will say a perfect act of contrition for mentioning the plaintiff’s background. It was professional curiosity. But first, I need the folks who have already ruled in the palintiff’s favor to back off. Then my mea culpa.”
First, a conditional apology based upon the actions of third parties for improperly impugning the character of a principle party is not an apology. You don’t owe anyone here an apology. If anyone is owed an apology, you owe Leila Tarantino an apology regardless of what anyone here does or says.
Second, if in referring to “the folks who have already ruled in the palintiff’s favor” you mean me, I wouldn’t suggest holding your breath waiting for an apology you are not due let alone for a position I did not take. I respect straw men even less than I respect emotional and/or irrational arguments and in any case I would not apologize for taking you to task for wrongly brining her parenting skills into question as being in any way relevant to this discussion of the potential violation of her civil rights under any circumstances. If you don’t like having missteps/mistakes like that pointed out? Don’t make them. However, if you’re going to sulk and not give Tarantino the apology she deserves from you because you didn’t like having your emotional and irrational criticisms of her pointed out and want an apology you are simply not due? That is your decision.
Also, for future reference, “back off” is not something I’m either known for or inclined to do.
OT OT OT
Lawyers, I have concluded, are the only professionals where among other skills, the primary ones are the use of abuse with words of your opponent. Logic, earlier precedents, verbal agility, all are weapons highly developed.
A layman venturing in here is a cowboy stumbling into the OK corral. (Another place where it today is quiet, I was there in ’61)
Police are still an open question with me.
the back up called prevented the original cop from actually raping her. he had a female officer do it for him. he watched. still thinks about this every day, too.
we dont hate cops, we just hate the fact that they can do incredible things to civilians that would put most people in jail-
and they get away with it with no repercussions except paid vacations –
everything from outright murder (Chamberlaine case) to pulling out tampons in broad daylight on a public street.
I like emphasizing the obvious (social rank) which we often forget. Especially we who enjoy a good one.
OT. read up on Romney on ThinkProgress. Still nauseous.
Nick,
Now you are teaching me. Thanks.
Am always willing to learn.
But it is always funny that this takes so long to “lose” the squad car video file.
And no, not a cop hater, but one all too ready to prejudge. When are we citizens ever offered an alternative to just reading the headlines and pre-digested reports? Facts? Never. Correctly shown? Never.
And we are taught from the first grade to accept only one case of truth, the one from above. Judge, decide yourself?
Never. That is actually different today some claim for some schools.
idealist707, In a perfect world social rank would have no influence. I’ve not found that world as yet.