A woman filed a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio, Texas when a detective forced her to spread her legs and pulled out her tampon on suspicions that she was carrying drugs.
Although the incident happened in August 2016, she received her $205,000 (RM858,000) as compensation on Thursday (17 October).
According to Metro, Natalie Simms was waiting for her boyfriend when she was stopped by police officers who were investigating the area for drug activity. She allowed them to search her car knowing she didn’t do anything wrong.
However, a female detective began searching Natalie’s pockets, and finding nothing, told her to “spread her legs”, according to the audio of a dash cam’s footage.
Source: Metro
The detective then asked Natalie if she was hiding anything in her vagina. Natalie said no, but said that she was on her period. The detective then “pulled open Natalie’s pants and underwear” and tugged on the string attached to her tampon with five male officers nearby.
Natalie kept saying that she did not have any drugs on her, but the detective continued to search her body. She told Natalie to turn around and spread her legs again.
Throughout the search, Natalie kept asking if she could be taken to a police station so that the search could be done in a private area. But the detective responded, “If you don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to worry about, okay, but these are all the places that everybody hides stuff, so this is where we have to search.”
Source: Mayo Clinic
Natalie was eventually able to leave the area after officers did not find anything illegal.
After the incident, Natalie filed a lawsuit against the detective who was brought to court and was questioned by lawyers about how she had treated Natalie.
“It’s full of blood, right? Why would you do that?” the lawyers asked, to which the detective responded, “I don’t know. It looked like it had stuff in there.”
“Officer Wilson had violated Natalie vaginally, and now it appeared that she might violate Natalie anally. She was doing so without a warrant, with no medical personnel present, and on a public street in view of several people as well as those passing by.”
The city of San Antonio offered Natalie a $205,000 (RM858,000) settlement, while Wilson retired nine months after the incident.
Body searches are necessary sometimes, but this detective had gone too far!
Also read: Staff Finds Used Sanitary Pad in Kettle of a Five-Star Hotel, Woman Admits It Was Her
