Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Judicially Authorized Rape: The Newest Weapon in the Prohibitionist Arsenal



Under Utah state law, “object rape” consists of the involuntary "penetration, however slight, of the genital or anal opening of another person who is 14 years of age or older, by any foreign object, substance, instrument, or device….” This act constitutes a form of aggravated sexual assault for which the penalty is a prison term of no less than ten years, followed by lifetime enrollment in the sex offender registry

As 22-year-old Utah resident Stephan Cook discovered, the crime of object rape – like any other offense against person or property—can be transmuted into a policy option when it’s committed pursuant to a government decree. 

While attending Snow College in Ephraim, Utah, four years ago, Cook and a friend were smoking cigarettes near a parked car when they were accosted by several police officers. Following the standard script, the officers – who, let us not forget, were trained to lie – claimed to smell marijuana and demanded to search the car.

Cook and his friend emptied their pockets and consented to a pat-down search. They permitted the officers to search the interior of the car several times with a drug-sniffing dog. Eventually a glass pipe was found in the trunk. Rather than arresting Cook, who was a passenger in the car, the officers ordered him to drive to a nearby police station, supposedly to save his friend the expense of an impound fee.
Cook (r.) with his attorney, Lindsay Jarvis.

There was neither probable cause nor reasonable suspicion to justify the search the car. By ordering Cook to drive to the station, the police made it clear that they did not believe that he was under the influence of marijuana. 

Furthermore, Cook didn’t own the car, a fact that severs the thinnest thread connecting him to the glass pipe found in the trunk.

Yet the officers persisted in their effort to manufacture an offense. Cook was detained and informed that he would have to undergo a drug test. When the police demanded that he sign a waiver of his rights, Cook – whose parents are police officers -- repeatedly and explicitly demanded access to an attorney.

“I asked for an attorney because I didn’t know if this was right,” Cook recalled in a television interview.  “Once I did that, they said ‘We’re getting a search warrant so we’re going to have your urine by the end of the night.’” A “bodily fluids warrant” was issued “authorizing” the cops to obtain a urine sample. It did not, however, specify that the sample could be taken by force. Lindsay Jarvis, Cook’s attorney, informed Pro Libertate that the warrant was issued by a judicial “commissioner,” rather than a judge. 

Since the police considered Cook sufficiently sober to drive, they clearly weren’t facing exigent circumstances. Even if we make the unwarranted assumption that the police were entitled to take a urine sample, they had the luxury of collecting one at leisure – but this wouldn’t have satisfied whatever prurient interest they had in inflicting unnecessary pain on a teenage male.

Cook’s abductors took him to the Sanpete Valley Hospital, where Nurse Ratched told them “to hold my shoulders and she undoes my pants and wipes me down with iodine, catheterized me and took my urine,” the victim recalls. 

Ms. Jarvis points out that the purpose of this procedure was clearly punitive, not investigative: “Rather than employ a simple blood test, they’re forcibly catheterizing these people.”

This satisfies another element of the statutory definition of object rape: The act was committed with the “intent to cause substantial emotional or bodily pain to the victim.”

After sexually assaulting Cook, the offenders charged the victim with possession of marijuana and resisting arrest. Even before the matter was brought before a judge, Cook was also slapped with immediate disciplinary action by Snow College.

“The commissioner who issued the warrant was also on the college disciplinary board,” Jarvis observed in a phone interview with Pro Libertate. “So his student account was immediately put on hold until he completed a two-month class on alcohol and drug abuse. He wasn’t able to complete his midterms, or register for the following semester. This cost him a lot of money on what amounts to wasted tuition.”

Rather than being prosecuted, two of the officers who sexually assaulted Cook– Chad Huff and Justin Aagard –have been promoted. Huff is now Chief of Police in Fountain Green, Utah, and Aagard has been appointed to the same post in nearby Moroni City. In the interest of civic integrity, the municipal governments of Fountain Green and Moroni City should post a warning informing visitors that their respective police departments are under the direction of violent sex offenders. 

Cook, who was forced to take a plea, has filed an $11 million lawsuit against Sanpete County. This has drawn the predictable shoulder-shrug response from county attorney Peter Stirba. "My client officers certainly did not do anything wrong,” Stirba declares, insisting that “the officers were acting pursuant to a lawful court order requiring catheterization of Mr. Cook.”

Leaving aside the fact that no document or directive can make the act of object rape “lawful,” the warrant to which Stirba refers was issued by a county functionary who had no legal training of any kind – and it did not require catheterization. The painful and degrading procedure was inflicted on Cook for the purpose of punishing him for invoking his rights, and to terrorize his friend into compliance: After witnessing what had been done to Cook, the owner of the vehicle surrendered a urine sample "voluntarily."

The gratuitously vicious nature of this episode is further underscored by the fact that although Cook was booked into jail after being violated, the urine samples were never tested, and no record was made of his visit to the hospital.

“What they did was wrong – and I’m pretty sure they’re doing it to other people,” Cook observes. Indeed, there’s reason to believe that object rape of this variety has become a preferred tactic in the “war on drugs.”

“It was like I had been raped … and all those guards were helping,” testified Haley Owen Hooper of her own “forced catheterization” by Sevier County deputies in December 2004. 

Hooper (known at the time as Haley Owen) was a 20-year-old who stood about 5’1” and weighed about 105 pounds. She was pinned beneath a thugscrum of at least four officers – one of whom later gave a self-serving estimate that he weighed 260 pounds. As she struggled beneath a half-ton of tax-subsidized suet, her pants and underwear were removed so a licensed practical nurse could insert the catheter.

A few seconds before the assault began, Hooper had pleaded for the deputies to draw blood instead of sexually violating her.

“I screamed, `Why can’t you just take my blood?’” Hooper testified at trial. “The guy in the black cowboy hat said, `The judge wants urine. We’re going to take urine.’” 

That was a lie, of course. A magistrate had issued a “body fluids” warrant, but it did not specify a urine sample. Furthermore, the affidavit requesting the warrant was “weak and misleading,” in the words offederal District Judge K.K. McIff. The officer claimed that Hooper, who was arrested following a traffic stop, was “belligerent and uncooperative … fidgety and nervous,” behavior that he described as “consistent with the use of a central nervous system stimulant.” He also claimed that the stop was conducted because it was “known by the officers that Haley [Hooper] didn’t have a drivers [sic] license.”

The trained liar who filed that affidavit carefully avoided the fact that the “traffic stop” was actually carried out by the Central Utah Narcotics Task Force, who thought that the car was be driven by another person. It wasn’t until the vehicle was stopped that the officers realized that Miss Hooper was behind the wheel. She had committed no traffic infractions to justify the stop. Her agitated behavior – which included treating her captors to some pungent epithets – was not evidence of drug use, but the predictable result of being surrounded by more than a half-dozen strangers who pointed guns at her and barraged her with threats and profane, abusive language. 

Judge McIff’s Memorandum Decision recalls that when the officers demanded to search the vehicle, Hooper “challenged the officers’ authority” by refusing to cooperate. They replied that “they knew more about the law than she did and that they could search anyway.” Although nothing incriminating could be found, Hooper’s “contemptuous” attitude simply couldn’t be countenanced – so she was taken to a nearby hospital for summary punishment in the form of sexual humiliation.

The only suitable description of what was done to Hooper is “gang rape” – albeit through the use of an object. Just before that crime was committed, the perpetrators, seeking to preserve the fiction that what they did was legal, placed a phone call to the court clerk to ask if the warrant would apply to both blood and urine. That phone call wouldn’t have been necessary if, as the rapist in the black cowboy hat claimed, the judge had instructed them to collect urine.

The clerk, who allegedly conferred with the judge, supposedly said that the warrant would include the forcible extraction of a urine sample. There is no way to know whether that conversation took place, because no printed or audio record was made of the phone call. 
Rapist enabler: Federal Judge Dee Benson.

In July 2010, federal District Judge Dee Benson dismissed Hooper’s lawsuit against the Task Force on the grounds of “qualified immunity.” This means that as things presently stand, police in Utah are free to commit object rape in order to teach an object lesson to Mundanes who commit the unforgivable offense called “contempt of cop.” Similar conditions prevail elsewhere in the Soyuz

Last September, a federal district court for southern Indiana dismissed a lawsuit filed by Jamie Lockard, who was subjected to a forced catheterization following a traffic stop for supposedly running a stop sign in March 2009. Officer Brian Miller, once again sticking to the preferred script, claimed that he smelled alcohol on Lockard’s breath. A Breathalyzer test returned a BAC of 0.07 – which is under Indiana’s legal limit.

Rather than apologizing for his unwarranted intrusion and bidding Lockard good evening, Miller demanded that Lockard submit to a chemical test. When the motorist refused, Miller abducted (or, as he would say, “arrested”) him, filled out a pre-printed application for a search warrant, and faxed it to the local judge. Since this happened at 12:10 a.m., it’s not unreasonable to believe that the warrant Miller obtained was the product of a less than rigorous judicial deliberation.

After Lockard was taken to Dearborn County Hospital, Miller demanded that he provide a sample. Since he was unable to pee on command, Lockard was charged with “obstruction” – a class D felony -- because “he refused to voluntarily give a urine sample,” according to Miller’s report. Miller and another officer, Michael Lanning, pinned the victim down while a nurse prepared the catheter.

Originally, the nurse planned to use a straight size 16 Foley catheter. After Lockard pointed out that he suffers from an enlarged prostate, she switched to a smaller Coude catheter. This didn’t improve things for the victim: Lockard described the pain he experienced as “just as if somebody would take a burning hot coal and stick it up your penis.”

For several weeks after the incident, Lockard suffered severe burning sensations and other symptoms described by a physician as “consistent with clinical prostatis.” After spending some time in jail, Lockard was forced to take a plea for reckless driving. He was given a 180 day suspended sentence, 180 days’ probation, a $100 fine, and assessed $165.00 in court costs. 

Lockard’s lawsuit was dismissed on the familiar, and incurably specious, grounds of “qualified immunity.” The ruling took note of more than a half-dozen precedents involving forced catheterization, all of which grant studiously ambiguous permission for police to violate people suspected of harboring “evidence” in the bloodstream. Significantly, two of those precedents – Sparks v. Stutler and Levine v. Roebuck – involved forced catheterization of inmates by prison officials. In each of those cases, a district court judge ruled that the procedure was an impermissible violation of the individual – only to be reversed by a federal judge who decreed that members of the State’s punitive caste enjoy “qualified immunity” to commit object rape, at least with a judge’s consent.

The events described in Lockard v. Lawrenceburg – the case offering the most detailed examination of the issue of object rape by police officers – occurred in Indiana. That state recently enacted a measure recognizing the innate right of innocent people to use lethal defensive force against police officers who commit criminal aggression against their personsor property. I’d like to believe that those two developments are related. 







Dum spiro, pugno!

32 comments:

Chris Mallory said...

I have had to be cath'd for medical reasons before. I can say without a doubt, the government would not cath me without killing me.

Anonymous said...

This could happen to literally anyone. Doesn't it make you feel so safe to have cops around?

idahobob said...

ALL of the offenders need a judicious amount of copper and lead administered to them.

Bob
III

Anonymous said...

Hang every single offending officer. Leave the bodies on display publicly at town hall.

willb said...

Talk about "screwed, glued and tattooed."

Qualified immunity should stop
somewhere up the chain of command,
shouldn't it?

But then you'd have to sue the State
which has "sovereign" immunity.

Of course it's issues like these where
the fed courts choose to gallantly
defer to state's rights.

ray said...

outrageous and sick -- demonic

nurse ratched rules amerika and that aint no exaggeration

thanks to mr grigg for this report on these disturbing, and increasingly routine, crimes by officials sworn to protect the citizenry

nobody's getting away with anything, the measure of this will be required

Anonymous said...

When the judicial system conspires to harm citizens, citizens are left with few options. It would be terrible if these scum's loved ones were to suffer some unfortunate accidents. These moronic monsters are too stupid to realize that escalating violence against society for nothing more than pure enjoyment has terrible, terrible consequences. People will not tolerate this behavior forever, nor will they forget.

Anonymous said...

7:58 Could these scrums on shrums really be said to "love" anyone?
Besides their peenis or their car? Bottle of Al Cohol perhaps. Ga ga. Muoh muoh.

~~~L~~~

willb said...

Obviously they enjoy inflicting these tortures.

It would be a whole lot easier, and cheaper,
to just offer them a Coke and then handcuff
them to a potty chair.

Better still, just leave 'em the f**k alone.

Again, it's not just the cops, but the judges
who are inflicting these abuses.

When you "sic" your dog on a passerby, who's
to blame for the injury? You? The dog? Both?

Anonymous said...

"a half-ton of tax-subsidized suet"; that is a great description! Funny that these cops are so tough until they are threatened with being held responsible for their actions. Then they run and hide behind 'immunity'.

Dr. Goldstein said...

Great Article. Well written - thank you for caring.

This type of police "immunity" has been going on for a long time in the USA.

About 20 years ago we decided to permanently immigrate from the USA to NW Canada. Back then I could see the constitution being shredded one "tool for law enforcement" at a time.

No regrets. I am certain the US/NATO warmongering will trigger WW3 within the next 18 months. My wife and I are happy to be self sufficient in a remote and beautiful area.

God bless my American friends !

MoT said...

And so the long train of abuse continues.

Jolly Roger said...

I read about atrocities like this every week. I'm really looking forward to the day when people simply start shooting every cop they see.

No, we DON'T need cops, and no, NONE of them are "good cops."

Good people don't seek out that kind of work, and if a good person joins the police because he needs a job, it's only a short amount of time before the job changes who he is.

These sadistic abusers do nothing good for society that decent people can't do for themselves and their community.

They're simply a gang of hired thugs being paid by your tax dollars to oppress you and protect the rich. We need to get rid of every last one of these useless bastards, one way or another, and it needs to be done ASAP.

Anonymous said...

... And this is what it means to be a Helot.

Anonymous said...

What about the Nurse she should have refused! I am an RN and I would call the judge personally to get blood drawn because I am not going to sexually assault a patient and risk my Nursing license for him. I would say blood draw would be much easier on the patient, less invasive and more accurate and that I have notified my supervisor and all of this has been documented!

Anonymous said...

Not at all. I thought the police were corrupt before! This just keeps getting worse. It's disgusting!

Anonymous said...

My mother has been a nurse for 34 years and she said the same thing. She would have never gone through with any of that unless she had a direct order from a judge. Even then, she'd have her doubts. Everyone is to blame here but the victims. They did nothing. Our system is compromised, this country is dying.

Anonymous said...

I was thirteen when six cops jump me ans strangled me and beat me to
the point that my own Grandmother said ______Is that You , and the Judge asked if I had been beaten by a Hoodlum Gang and I, said No those police officers did this to me
Thank God the Black judge looked at me a poor white kid that weighted 113 lbs., and said Son what happen while the police were sweating to the point the Judge could see who was guilty

I was poor and did not go to a Hospitable and get x-rays and pictures to sue them

A man told me take a coin and turn it
One side is the Cop & the other a Crimminal & he was a retired police officer
I am in my 60-70s and can not wait till I pased from here to enterity

joebanana said...

The fifth amendment of our constitution states that "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself", meaning the evidence is inadmissible in the first place. Drug tests are unconstitutional, forced drug tests are a criminal act. The only remedy is a well sighted sniper rifle, and patients.

Anonymous said...

There used to be a doctrine in place known as 'The Body Is Inviolate,' meaning that the authorities could not force the extraction of bodily fluids form one. This is part of English tort law which I believe prevailed here in the US also. But when those in power can change the rules, make themselves exempt from the law (and of course raise their own pay), only corruption will follow.

Pete Sisco said...

It is astonishing how, over the last 10 years, the Constitution has been reduced to a relic that now offers virtually zero protection to citizens from the acts of the government and its agents. Our property, money and person are no longer our own by any objective definition.

Anonymous said...

I second the public hanging in town square option.

Anonymous said...

police state... scary scary scary form of police state. any and all violence is perfectly fine. really just freaking disgusting..

Robert in Arabia said...

Lies, damn lies, and the FBI.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/richard-jewell-and-steven-hatfill-two-white-men-who-beat-the-serial-killer-rap

Anonymous said...

While I sympathize with Mr. Cook and the violation he endured,I wonder if his parents, who are both police officers, did this same thing to the sons of others, and justice came back to bite them in the butt, or their son's butt.

Anonymous said...

We THE PEOPLE NEED TO WAKE UP AND TAKE OUR POWER BACK!!! The judicial system in the USA is now based on guilty until proven innocent!! But what do we expect when THE SUPREME COURT has ruled now that if arrested for any reason, you can be STRIP SEARCHED!! And they wonder why people want to or do carry guns!! The rich keep getting richer while the middle class and poor get poorer Our forfather's are rolling over in their graves!! Thank you for all the comments and this story. I too have been a victim of police immunity on an improper "pat down." Hope the cop enjoyed his feel! This was in Texas. Karma will get these people in due time!

ray said...

While I sympathize with Mr. Cook and the violation he endured,I wonder if his parents, who are both police officers, did this same thing to the sons of others, and justice came back to bite them in the butt, or their son's butt.

good point

eventually the police state starts running out of 'criminals' and begins to eat its own

like any cancer

wonder how his folks feel about their cop dramas on teevee now?

Tony said...

I think it's time that we start doing this to cops. I'm going to get a group of 20 guys, go find a cop or two that are alone, hold them down, shove something up their dick, watch them squirm, watch the fear in their eyes as they think to themselves "Why is this happening to me?". I want to watch them hurt so bad. I read stories like this all over the internet, all day, every day. I'm sick of it. I'm ready to start some sort of cop assassination squad. How can some human think that they have the "right" to do this to someone? My blood is boiling right now. I'll tell you what, they would have to knock me unconscious to catheterize me. I'd go kicking and screaming.

Anonymous said...

Thd zombie apocalypse meme is a big joke on us. Americans are the zombies. Evidence being, we allow this to happen.

Anonymous said...

This happened b/c the president back in the pioneer days let utah be a territorial state==separate to avoid problems of mormons raping and burning down homes of kids, women and men nonmembers==
also what about the supreme court in DC. isnt she appealing this to DC??? whatever court is outside of utahs jurisdiction

Fedup said...

I'm curious. With all these "qualified immunity" dismissals, why can't the plaintiff's file a federal suit based on 18 US 242:

Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
For the purpose of Section 242, acts under "color of law" include acts not only done by federal, state, or local officials within the their lawful authority, but also acts done beyond the bounds of that official's lawful authority, if the acts are done while the official is purporting to or pretending to act in the performance of his/her official duties. Persons acting under color of law within the meaning of this statute include police officers, prisons guards and other law enforcement officials, as well as judges, care providers in public health facilities, and others who are acting as public officials. It is not necessary that the crime be motivated by animus toward the race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin of the victim.

The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.

Anonymous said...

Yea, and after they tazer you they won't have to use a catheter...