I-TEAM: Attorney takes aim at BRPD’s strip search policy

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The troubling new allegations pouring out of the Brave Cave this week— that officers strip searched a mother and her three boys— only adds to a growing list of complaints that all center around one policy within the Baton Rouge Police Department. Now, attorney Thomas Frampton is pushing for a federal judge to force the agency to make changes.

“The strip search policy that led to all of these lawsuits and has been plaguing this department for years is somehow still on the books so it’s clear that absent of a federal judge coming in and literally forcing BRPD to do the right thing that nothing is going to change,” said Frampton.

Currently, the BRPD policy allows officers to strip search someone if they have reasonable suspicion that the person has guns or drugs on them. Frampton says that policy goes against a decades-old Supreme Court ruling and has already cost taxpayers in East Baton Rouge Parish.

WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked Frampton why there seems to be a delay in changing the policy if it has already cost taxpayers thousands of dollars in settlement costs.

“I can’t fathom the answer to that,” said Frampton. “It’s clear they don’t care about Baton Rouge citizens’ constitutional rights. It’s clear they don’t care about public safety but at the very least you would think they would care about taxpayer dollars.”

Back on New Year’s Day 2020, BRPD officers can be seen on body camera video strip searching a teenager and his brother in broad daylight on a busy Baton Rouge street. Because of what happened during that incident, the city-parish handed over $35,000 to make a lawsuit in the case go away. Since the WAFB I-TEAM exposed the arrest and alleged beating of Jeremy Lee inside the Brave Cave, there have been more than a dozen similar complaints of abuse at the secretive facility. Many of the people who were allegedly taken to the Brave Cave also claim they were strip searched there.

A grandmother says she was taken there, strip searched and faced a body cavity search back in June 2023 after she and her husband were pulled over for a traffic stop. When officers searched her car and found prescription pills mixed in the same bottle, she alleges they took her to the Brave Cave even though she tried to tell them she had proof of her prescription for the medication.

RELATED: https://www.wafb.com/2023/09/15/i-team-woman-alleges-she-faced-body-cavity-search-inside-brave-cave/

Four officers, including a high-ranking deputy chief have been arrested after they allegedly beat a man in their custody and then tried to get rid of the body camera video that showed the beating. The case also stems from a strip search that happened inside a bathroom.

RELATED: https://www.wafb.com/2023/09/28/i-team-warrants-issued-4-brpd-officers-3-custody/

Earlier this week, a mother claims she and her sons were all strip searched inside the Brave Cave and that her 11-year-old son was sexually assaulted in the process. Frampton says it is clear the department needs to act now.

“What’s happening should concern everyone in Baton Rouge,” said Frampton. “Under the Louisiana constitution, private citizens have the right to resist with force of violence when law enforcement is engaged in an illegal search or seizure. Somebody is going to get very badly hurt, I fear, if the lawyers involved and the leadership involved don’t bring BRPD practice into compliance with the constitution.”

Dozens of candidates interviewed to be the next top cop in Baton Rouge late last year. One of them, Cliff Ivey, who serves as the Assistant Chief of the Central Police Department said changing the policy would be the first thing he would tackle in the role.

“As I read it now, it’s posted on the department’s website. Strip searches of non-arrestees are permitted solely on the basis of articulable reasonable suspicion. That is legally indefensible and constitutionally offensive,” Ivey said during his interview.

Thomas Morse, Jr., the man who actually got the job as the chief of the Baton Rouge Police Department, is currently reviewing every departmental policy within his first 100 days including the strip search policy. Frampton believes the agency cannot afford to keep the policy in place as it stands.

“The chief, the mayor or the city council members… if any one of them wanted to actually step up and put an end to this, it could be done tomorrow,” said Frampton.

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