As many as 65,000 people, some arrested on misdemeanor charges, were strip-searched during a 10-month period from 1996-1997.

In mid-1996 the Corrections Department adopted a policy of strip-searching every person arrested on any charges "for security purposes." The city administration initiated this policy in spite of a ruling by a federal appeals court in 1986 barring police from strip-searching people arrested on minor charges unless there was "reasonable suspicion" that they were hiding weapons or contraband. The policy was dropped soon after the class-action lawsuit was filed in 1997.

The illegal searches were carried out by jail guards in two boroughs of New York--Manhattan and Queens. Many of those searched were arrested for the first time in their lives and charged with minor infractions such as loitering, disorderly conduct, or subway offenses.

During the strip-searches police compelled both males and females to disrobe, then in many cases required them to lift their breasts or genitals for visual inspection, and to squat and cough.

The provisional settlement includes a formula by which each strip-search victim will receive a minimum of $250, and those who can prove emotional or physical trauma may be awarded up to $22,500. Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the press that this settlement would be the largest in a civil rights suit against New York City, and one of the largest civil rights settlements against a city government anywhere.

Over recent years a series of marches and rallies here have put the spotlight on the brutality and killings carried out by the cops. Thousands have marched to protest the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant shot 41 times in his apartment building by police in February 1999; the brutal assault and sodomization by cops in August 1997 that severely injured Abner Louima; or the killing of 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond by plainclothes police in March 2000.

The news of the potential settlement came on the heels of another settlement in which the city government agreed to pay $548,000 to three people injured when mounted police rode horses over them during a march to protest the murder of Matthew Shephard, a gay man brutally attacked and left to die by antigay bigots in Wyoming in 1998.

Also during the previous week, three Long Island, New York, women filed a suit against Suffolk County police officer Frank Wright for allegedly forcing each of them to remove their clothes after stopping them for drunk driving. The women are all Latina or Native American.  
 
 
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