There is a bizarre case out of Miami where officer Prabhainjana Dwivedi, 33, was arrested by the FBI for allegedly pulling over female drivers solely to look at their breasts and make “sexually suggestive conversations.” What was most striking about the story is that this was an FBI investigation based on the claim of a civil rights violation. It shows how far federal jurisdiction has extended into previously state areas.
The FBI says that it witnessed Dwivedi pulling over women “without probable cause, reasonable [suspicion] or other lawful authority to conduct a stop.” In one incident, he asked a woman to “lower the zipper on the front of her dress down past her breasts to her mid-stomach.” He held her for one hour and 20 minutes before being released without a citation. In another incident, he allegedly noticed a child seat in the car and threatened a 24-year-old woman that, if he arrested her, she could lose her child. When she asked to take a sobriety test to show she was not intoxicated, he refused. He then reportedly discussed the woman’s breast enhancement surgery, and asked “if she had any photographs of her breasts.” She then reportedly let him see photos on her phone. He stated, according to the complaint, that he wanted to see the scars from the surgery and unbelievably “M.F. then lifted her shirt and showed Dwivedi the scar.”
There is also the basis for a tort action in this case. While there is no false arrest, there is the intentional infliction of emotional distress. It would make for an interesting case with the woman who consented to lifting her shirt. To the extent that she felt reasonably compelled by the show of authority, the consent would not be a viable defense. Privacy claims are difficult due to the fact that much of the viewing was in public. However, requiring the unzipping of clothing under the display of authority would raise such a claim. Clearly a veiled threat to one’s custody over one’s child would be sufficient to deny an argument of consent.
In either the criminal or tort case, Prabhainjana Dwivedi will likely argue that the stops were justified and it could come down to any video evidence or witness testimony from the FBI agents.
Source: CBS
Matt,
Why do you ask?
idealist707 1, September 8, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Not since they helped get rid of JFK, RFK, MLKjr and did not allow the investigation of the terrorists BEFORE 9/11 in Chicago office. Was blocked by Washington HQ. Testimony exists to see on the net.
As for memories, I was presumptious to give you advice.
It is your life, but we do such things here, I believe.
My apologies for offending you. I have said I don’t find dwelling in memories good for me. But we are different and my presumption was faulty in facts, not just as an offense to you. You can do as you wish of course.
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How long have you been in Sweden?
You know, this is addressed to all, as I presumptiously do on occasions.
The MO on this blog (exceptional?, no idea) is often in the form of short snips, sound bites, can you top this (you are not old enough to have heard it on the radio, my quips are better than yours, my jabs are better, my deep thoughts are better.
Expecting really listening and reflecting on what is heard is not so popular it would seem. Now I may be slow, and others are very much faster and sharper than I. But believe I am correct that it would be desireable if we reflected a bit more.
I know myself. And instant judgement has been and is my main MO. Horribly so.
Wonder if others think we are too quick at times, or even too often?
Woosty,
Don’t agree with what you say to me. The world is of course not rotten, nor do I in reality think so. Do you feel that I really do so? Sad, you know me not at all in which case. Flash, crash, bam, boom are often methods I
use. And enjoy using. I ain’t changing.
Now to the film trailer. Help me there. I think I saw that film. The girl goes into a place for widows. She is hired out as a prostitute on call, but retains her purity in spirit. A young man of high caste sees her by chance, falls in love with her, and after getting to know her wishes to take her to meet his father across the river. On the way she recognizes the house as one she has gone to as a prostitute and the father is the client. Is this the same movie? The end was very special, hopeful but tragic.
The beginning is more shocking, terribly so.
As for believing in the law. Glad you have something you believe in there. Others here have convinced me otherwise.
Malisha,
Don’t agree with what you say about/to me.
“Idealist, you’ve gone awfully far with the limited data there.”
I ain’t going anywhere. I am making a play based on crappy guys. You know the ones who make obscene comments to passing girls, feel up women in cars, scratch their crotches and leer. I am not testifying in court nor making a deposition, whatever that is. So relax.
It was my attempt to figure out how this guy and eventually his buddies figure things out.
And I wonder if the whole comment was meant for me, including the Trayvon Martin bit? Weird in which case. I have not mentioned none of that in your comment except the garbageman assault. I will still say that the FBI did not come in for the feely cop being the object of the investigation UNLESS (as I said before) it was a status person who complained.
Who believes the FBI does other than what their chiefs want and the pols want. Not I. Don’t believe they do “good” things for the greater welfare of citizens. Not since they helped get rid of JFK, RFK, MLKjr and did not allow the investigation of the terrorists BEFORE 9/11 in Chicago office. Was blocked by Washington HQ. Testimony exists to see on the net.
As for memories, I was presumptious to give you advice.
It is your life, but we do such things here, I believe.
My apologies for offending you. I have said I don’t find dwelling in memories good for me. But we are different and my presumption was faulty in facts, not just as an offense to you. You can do as you wish of course.
How do you get the beads in New Orleans? If the girl was with me, I would make her keep her shirt on.
Oh Woosty, you’re making me feel guilty because you keep telling me you’re tired but I’m keeping you away from your well earned Saturday afternoon nap!
But anyway, I meant the still photo that Professor Turley put up there with his article, that looks like a guy with a paper in a fleabag hotel on one of the islands.
By the way I agree with what you’re posting. I don’t think we’re posting on cross-purposes here, just I’m expressing myself in a way that is confusing you, Idealist and probably some others. Maybe I should go take a Saturday afternoon nap my damn self. 🙂
are you asking about the picture from the film trailer? If so, I post it only because it is such an amazing film regarding the ‘status’ that somehow gets conferred and the absurdities that result….in this case, an 8 year old girl married to a 90 year old guy who dies on her wedding night and leaves her a widow…in India, a widow is considered an ‘untouchable’….the movie is profound and worth watching. The state tried many times to prevent its filming but did not succeed.
“…… it was during the time when most got away with it most of the time anyway …….” ~Malisha
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which is also when things generally happen to me, and many many others, and I would say, why it is important that the FBI and any other Federal Agencies be involved in the state level happenings right now…..the Country is split on ideological lines and there are people being victimized in the name of all kinds of crap without regard to their rights. It is the LAW that people turn to because that is what the Country is built on. Undermine the law that protects people and you take away the raison d’etre of citizenry.
Idealist, why should I turn off a memory? Who cares what the memory is, it IS my memory and it’s MINE. I’m made up of two things, right now: my cells and my memory.
Woosty, I wasn’t drawing conclusions from what I wrote about the garbageman incident; it was a very small matter both in the scheme of MY THINGS and in the scheme of THINGS, period. I was using it to illustrate stuff, as often I do when I’m analyzing what is said on-line.
If I were given a chance to erase 100 things that happened in my life — not just the memory of them, but them, themselves, completely and entirely — the summer afternoon sexual assault by the garbageman would NOT make it into the hundred, see?
What does the picture at the head of the article show? I can’t figure it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewNn2r2P3g
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewNn2r2P3g&w=560&h=315%5D
Idealist, you’ve gone awfully far with the limited data there. First of all, I am not even claiming that I was RIGHT in thinking that a low-status Virginia male was weighing his status against mine when he chose to sexually assault me. Second of all, the clinic did not necessarily have “sad women” frequenting it — that’s on YOU, not on HIM. He didn’t know what I would do and with what I know how, he wasn’t doing much calculating about whether or not he would get away with a free feel now and then; it was during the time when most got away with it most of the time anyway and he wouldn’t be keeping up on the latest in the sexual harassment legal news and there was no Turley blog.
I’m just saying the things I THOUGHT OF afterwards, and I mention them in terms of measuring the IMPORTANCE — which was, after all, what was questioned by some commenters. The issue was, if I remember, Was this important enough for the FBI to do an investigation?
See, my point is not that I was in any particular position at that time or that I should have or could have done this or that or the FBI should have or could have done this or that. I used some examples, up-thread, of things that could fly too low for the FBI radar but that could end up being quite important in the scheme of things. The comparative-status-measurement issues were just things that occurred to me at the time and most of that had nothing to do with public corruption that should be investigated by the FBI.
The important point for me, however, is YES, if there’s a COP in UNIFORM victimizing drivers and breaking the law repeatedly, it is important enough for the FBI to get in there immediately and check it the Hell out. My experience was not with officials; see, I was just mentioning that it was an experience that made a lasting impression in someone’s life; that’s a different kind of “important” to be sure.
Let’s switch over here to the Zimmerman case, which I have studied up on a bit. Let’s say that after the Sherman Ware incident, the FBI began an investigation into racism in the SPD. Let’s say they concluded that the officers in the SPD were doing unlawful things within the department including some crime cover-up and some racist profiling and some of this and some of that. Maybe small matters; a Black guy gets punched, so what? OK? Maybe those small matters and the FBI investigation lead to a totally different attitude in the squad room one evening in January 2012 when a guy who went to a couple Neighborhood Watch meetings in Twin Lakes makes complaints about a guy named George Zimmerman who’s been making the Black residents of that community feel uncomfortable by passing out flyers encouraging them to call the cops any time they see a young Black male in the neighborhood. The complaints say that George has deputized himself to drive around the neighborhood in a car, with a loaded gun, looking for young Black males to target and challenge, and they are afraid there will be trouble one day.
Let’s say that was actually ACTED ON rather than ignored.
Would George Z have been in a position to kill Trayvon Martin that night?
I think not.
I think the FBI getting into things to try to find out if public agencies are breaking the law and therefore endangering the constitutional rights of innocent citizens is very much called for, very appropriate, and needed.
That’s all I was saying.
I think you overestimate the intelligence of sexually aggressive garbagemen, at least in Virginia.
I don’t think the world is rotten Id, it is like an apple, there may be a few rotten worms in it but the Apple is not the worm.
Malisha, you are helping me to see things in a different way. I have often been aware of the sliperry slope that power imbalances can sometimes set people on….sometimes w/intention, sometimes not. It is (to my way of thinking ) a darker and much creepier thought to put those victimizations in terms of status. For one thing, it throws everydamnthing into a portal of measurement of worth….by what standard? Job title? Wealth? Ability to aggress? It also puts (it seems) every societal being into a hierarchical frame of reference….the very definition of Hell for some people, and also a system of caste. If that be so, is not the Law then framed as nothing more than a machine that keeps people in their place? And if that is so, how could any ‘low status’ person be expected to comply with the law? It would be the anti-thesis of life to do so. Whether or not Christian we as a society do couch our laws in the “All are Equal in the eyes of G*d”….and supposedly the law…..
oh look, I TOLD you I was too tired to delve……
This garbage guy knew his customers, he knew that there was a therapy clinic with sad women frequenting it.
He knew that women heading for a car without an Á/C was NOT a high status person. He knew you would become paralyzed and not note the license plate,and besides he and his fruitcake collegues took turns on dares to see how many free feels. The losers bought the beers and all had a laugh. If anybody complained there were three who would deny it.
Rotten world? You damn right it is.
Let us say she has been working the the theater (battle theater, military term) of women and child abuse for too long. IMHO.
Some day, if you are insistent, you can be more successful at turning the memories off and hooking onto the present. I try every day. Getting better at it.
Woosty, I only heard about this cop pulling women over and getting his jollies from their breasts a few days ago. Before that, I was (especially when I was younger) of the opinion that if somebody wanted to do something to you and get away with it, he would probably try to pick someone he had more STATUS than, as his victim. So I was shocked when I was minding my own business in a parking lot and a garbage man — not a COP, not a TEACHER, not any kind of an AUTHORITY FIGURE — would pull something like that and presume he was going to get away with it. It made me feel a lot more vulnerable because it meant I’d have to be on high alert whenever ANYONE was around because I didn’t just have to protect myself from people I thought would feel safe doing something to me, but from those who I THOUGHT would not TRY anything for the simple reason that somebody might defend ME instead of THEM when the chips fell. The fact that this guy came right over and sexually assaulted me meant, at the time, in my frame of mind of that time, “Anybody feels safe victimizing you at any time anywhere.”
NOW, if anybody tried that, even WITH the uniform of authority, I’d give them a very bad hair day. But THEN, I had what I thought was an important image to protect: “Nice, sane, quiet, reasonable, and good.”
‘Was it important that a low-status guy believed he had the right to do something like that to a woman who could have been low-status like him but also could have been somewhat higher in status? [After all, how did he know that I was not someone with a few connections?]”~Malisha
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I’m confused by what you seem to say is an expression or definition of status?…but I’m too tired to delve into it right now…
Woosty, not from that. 🙂
😉 🙁 
“I probably don’t think about it every day. I probably DO think about it once a week. I think about it in various contexts, not the least of them being “what’s important in life?””~ Malisha
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Do you think you have PTSD?
Addressing one question: Whether this is an important enough issue either for the FBI to get involved OR for Professor Turley to address here.
Second part of the question first: It’s HIS BLOG.
First part of the question: OK, let’s say it’s not all that important. The cop keeps stopping women and doing a little of this and a little of that. There’s a little bit of negative commentary here or there; the state agency that should take care of it doesn’t (who knows why, who cares) and it goes on some more. Big deal, right? And then the cop graduates (well, so far so good, we can take it to the next step) starts to stop women and cop a feel now and then. First woman he does it to doesn’t report because she has a DUI on her record and she’s afraid of trouble. Second woman doesn’t report because her husband has been accusing her of infidelity and if she does this, he will misinterpret, think she flirted with an officer to avoid a ticket, and divorce her. Third woman he does it to reports him and his department says he has a clean record and they don’t believe her, and her ex-husband hears about it and sues her for custody because she’s making false allegations against cops and seems to be delusional and there’s a court-ordered evaluation that finds she is obsessing about some imaginary traffic stop where a cop allegedly felt her up and she loses her kids. Fourth woman doesn’t report it because she’s got her sister and brother-in-law living with her in her apartment, without permission from the landlord, and they’re “undocumented immigrants” and if she makes some trouble, the ripples of trouble that come from trouble may wash onto her shore. Meanwhile the guy is still getting away with it but a female cop in his precinct actually believes the stories and starts some kind of trouble for him and he gets very angry and resentful. This causes him to “lose it” and at the next traffic stop where he has just planned a little bit of touchy-feely, the woman resists him in a way that touches a nerve and he drags her out of the car and kills her.
Then it gets on Law & Order SVU.
OK? Is it important? Is it important enough that a cop is stopping women and dehumanizing them and coercing them into acts that give him sexual pleasure WHILE HE IS ARMED AND THEY ARE NOT?
Is it important enough to ask the guardians of our Constitutional rights to step in? Jeez, I dunno, yuh THINK?
SCENE: I was 32 years old. I was going to the Northern Virginia Pastoral Care Counseling Center once a week to see a therapist who had started out to be a “marriage counselor” but who, when my then husband refused to participate, became a “therapist” instead (Alice Kassabian, who died recently, apparently of Lou Gherig’s disease, and whose son is now Chief Judge of Fairfax, Virginia). I was leaving the appointment and started up my car which was parked in the small parking lot by the center. A guy who was working with one of those private contractors that pick up solid waste from businesses (when the county does not provide that service) came up to the open car window (it was summer) and reached in and grabbed my breast while telling me that I had “some big breasts there” and he approved. Then he got onto the big garbage truck and pulled away. I was shocked into utter inaction, paralyzed, as it were, and I sat behind the wheel in the parking lot for a few minutes thinking what I remember to be short, declaratory sentences, none of which meant much, and each of which was very rudimentary. “He just reached in here and grabbed my breast.” “A garbage man just told me I had big breasts.” “I didn’t notice the garbage truck when I came to my car.” “He wasn’t afraid of doing that in public.” “Nobody else saw it.” “If nobody else saw it, it’s a ‘he said/she said’ kinda event.” “The windows are down because it’s summer.” Etc.
That was 33 years ago. I never tried to do anything about it because even back then I was involved in a monster litigation (thanks to a corrupt judge, F. Bruce Bach of Fairfax, Virginia, whose wife Beverly Bach is one of the most prestigious and successful domestic relations lawyers in the Commonwealth) and the idea of adding another legal battle to the mix was impossible. 33 years ago.
I probably don’t think about it every day. I probably DO think about it once a week. I think about it in various contexts, not the least of them being “what’s important in life?”
Was it important that a low-status guy believed he had the right to do something like that to a woman who could have been low-status like him but also could have been somewhat higher in status? [After all, how did he know that I was not someone with a few connections?]
Was it important that I might be “blown away” by the police who would think that I was making a complaint about a very small matter?
Was it important that anybody with any vulnerability would be placed in a position where they couldn’t complain of illegal behavior?
On and on and on and on and on…
I am glad the FBI got onto this cop’s case and that they’re doing something. Let one out of a hundred cases work.