The Baton Rouge Police Department’s policy on strip searches has been scrutinized since a series of federal lawsuits last year accused officers of detaining suspects and taking them to an unmarked interrogation facility that’s come to be known as the “BRAVE Cave.”
Civil rights attorneys representing plaintiffs in two of the cases have insisted the department’s policy violates the U.S. Constitution because it allows officers to strip search non-arrested detainees without probable cause. City-parish leaders say reasonable suspicion that someone may be concealing drugs, a weapon or other contraband is all that’s necessary to warrant searches more intrusive than a pat-down frisk.
In legal terms, reasonable suspicion is a lower threshold that materializes when it appears that a crime may have occurred. Probable cause requires clear evidence that a crime has likely been committed.
The dueling arguments came to a head Tuesday during a hearing inside the U.S. Middle District Courthouse in downtown Baton Rouge. Attorneys in the federal lawsuit argued for an injunction to limit BRPD from strip searching suspects in police custody who haven’t been arrested if no probable cause exists for the search.
“BRPD today, tomorrow, the next day authorizes strip searches without probable cause,” said Thomas Frampton, a University of Virginia law school professor defending plaintiffs in the federal case. “We’re seeking a preliminary injunction because our clients and many other people in Baton Rouge face the possibility of a sexually humiliating strip search that occurs when the constitution doesn’t permit it.”
East Baton Rouge city-parish attorney Michael Schillage defended BRPD’s current policy as it’s been applied by the department the past 20 years.
“In and of itself, the ability to frisk does not create the ability to strip search,” he said, later adding, “The general order, on it’s face, it affords the ability for an officer to use his or her own discretion when it rises to reasonable articulable suspicion of concealment of weapons or contraband.”
U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, the Middle District’s chief judge, listened to the arguments Tuesday and will make a ruling at a later date.
The injunction battle is part of the ongoing civil case of Jeremy Lee, a 22-year-old Baton Rouge man who was kicked, punched and illegally strip searched twice by officers, according to a lawsuit filed last August. The January 2023 encounter with BRPD began as a drug call on Cadillac Street. Afterward, Lee had to be hospitalized with a fractured rib, chest and facial pain, and difficulty breathing.
His civil complaint names BRPD, former police chief Murphy Paul, the city-parish, ex-officer Troy Lawrence Jr., along with Joseph Carboni and Matthew Wallace, two other officers involved in his alleged strip search. The case was the first that referenced the narcotics processing facility that has notoriously been coined the BRAVE Cave. In court filings, attorneys described it as a “torture warehouse.”
Weeks later, a 47-year-old woman named Ternell Brown filed a similar suit alleging two male officers and a female officer forced her to undress and spread her genitals inside the BRAVE Cave, then later released her without charges. She too is being represented by Frampton and Baton Rouge civil rights lawyer Ryan Thompson.
“We continue to be optimistic – maybe naively – that BRPD leadership is going to do, in practice, what they have said time and time again to the public that they will do,” Frampton said outside the courthouse Tuesday. “It seems like every time there’s another scandal, BRPD leadership comes out and says ‘We’re going to address this, we’re going to hold wrongdoers accountable and look at our policies. And what we learned today is it doesn’t seem to be true in any meaningful sense.”
BRPD’s strip search policy is laid out in general order 281, which includes procedural guidelines for when officers are allowed to conduct them on people who haven’t been charged.
“Strip searches may be conducted on non-arrestees based on individualized articulable reasonable suspicion to frisk, probable cause to search, consent, or a court order,” said the policy, which went into effect in 1994.
Frampton argued that the “articulable reasonable suspicion to frisk” is an unconstitutional basis for strip searches and should be removed from the policy. He cited a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited officers over-the-clothes frisk searches if they only have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
“The basic teaching of every Supreme Court case, of every U.S. Fifth Circuit (Court of Appeals) case, is that unless there’s something more than a reasonable suspicion, officers can go no further than what was authorized by Minnesota v Dickerson,” he said. “To suggest that officers can inspect the genital or anal region of a non-arrestee is simply improper.”
BRPD Police Chief Thomas Morse took the stand and said the policy gives officers leeway to do searches on non-arrested detainees “based on the totality of circumstances” and other variables, such as the suspect’s body language or demeanor, the officer’s knowledge of other information, the nature of the crime being investigated and any possible weapons or narcotics.
He said Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies reviews BRPD’s policies every year and never recommended any changes to the strip search guidelines.
When Morse was sworn in Jan. 16, he said one of his priorities was a “detailed, top down” review of BRPD policies in his first 100 days. While being questioned by Frampton, he said he wasn’t aware of a formal attorney’s review of the strip search policy.
Frampton later asked if the policy allowed for officers to strip search detainees without probable cause in any situation. Morse envisioned a scenario where an officer frisks someone and feels what appears to be a weapon in the front of their pants. He said the policy would give the officer discretion to reach in the person’s pants and retrieve the weapon.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say only under very specific, limited and rare circumstances,” he added moments later.
Judge Dick took note of the police chief’s answer and told Schillage, the city-parish attorney, the department’s policy is “disjunctive” as written. Plainly read at face value, she said it appears to give officers authority to do strip searches if they only have enough suspicion for a frisk.
Schillage conceded that may be how the policy is worded, but it isn’t how officers are trained and it’s not how the department generally applies it. He explained that something that starts as a pat down can rise to a more intrusive search based on other suspicions that officers derive during their interactions with the suspect.
“A lay person we don’t have the training to understand what this policy does,” he said. “And I think that’s an important distinction between officers who are going out every day to do police work.”