Take these two incidents from the frontline of American police's ongoing campaign against soft drugs. In one, a young woman (left) claimed she was allegedly forced to pull down her trousers and endure a cavity search after an officer said he smelled marijuana in her car. In the second, a young man (right) who was arrested for speeding and who reportedly admitted to having smoked marijuana before getting behind the wheel, was permitted to
pose for a selfie with the arresting officer.
After an officer claimed to have smelled marijuana, the young woman was hand-cuffed and placed in the back of a patrol car. The policeman then called for a female colleague to perform an intimate search.
The female deputy, Ronaldine Pierre, ordered Ms Corley to pull her trousers down, but she refused, saying she was not wearing underwear, KTRK reported.
“Well, that doesn’t matter,” Ms Corley said the female officer told her. She said a second female officer then helped wrestle her to the ground while one sat on her back. They then spread Ms Corley’s legs open and inserted their fingers inside her vagina, she said.
“I feel like they sexually assaulted me,” she told the network. She said she felt “disgusted, downgraded, humiliated”.
Ms Corley is in the process of filing a legal action against the Harris County Sheriff's Office. The department did not immediately respond to inquiries, though reports said police have charged Ms Corley with two minor offences. They said she had found .02 ounces of marijuana on her.
The man detained for allegedly speeding, 20-year-old Gilbert Phelps, was pulled over in Iowa City last week. Police said he was speeding and had an obstructed registration sticker.
Reports said officer Ben Hektoen detected an odour of “ingested alcohol” inside the suspect’s Toyota Camry. When questioned, Mr Phelps said he had been smoking marijuana before getting into the car, according to a report on the Smoking Gun.
After being brought to the station, Mr Phelps was permitted to pose for a selfie with Mr Hektoen, with the officer “happily obliging” to the request.
No-one from the Iowa City Police Department was available for comment.. But Mr Phelps said he captioned the photo with emoji icons showing “a police car, next to a passenger car, next to a tow truck”.
There is nothing to connect the two events; the first incident is said to have taken place in Texas, the second in Iowa. They both involved different officers and different police departments. The full details of what transpired have yet to emerge.
But many on social media pointed out that the young woman in the first incident was black, while the young man who was allowed to pose while allegedly being stoned, was white.
It is difficult, the commentators said, to imagine the scenes being repeated had it been the other way around.
Source: Independent UK