INVASIVE D.C. POLICE SEARCHES ALLEGED

Lawsuit Calls Practice More Common With Poor, Minority Suspects

The chaos of the D.C. police raid, with officers banging on the door of his
Northwest Washington apartment building and chasing his cousin up the
stairs, was over. William Turner III said he and his grandfather weren't
carrying drugs, didn't have outstanding warrants and were just waiting for
the police to leave.

Then, Turner alleges, a D.C. police officer took them to the basement and
used his hands to search in Turner's underwear and probe between his
buttocks. The officer, he said, also made Turner's 73-year-old grandfather
strip naked from the waist down in a hallway between apartment units.

"I'm for police procedures. I love them cleaning up the neighborhood,"
Turner said, recalling the Sept. 30 incident. But "the extent that he took
it to, that was uncalled for."

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit yesterday alleging that such
searches are an "unjustified, unlawful and noxious custom and practice" of
the D.C. police department.

The suit was filed against the District and unnamed police officers on
behalf of Mitchell Fernandors, a Mount Rainier man who said he was given a
similarly intrusive search last October on a Northeast Washington street. It
alleges that "such searches are performed disproportionately on young,
African-American and Hispanic persons in low-income neighborhoods."

The Turners are not involved in the suit but contacted The Washington Post
this month to complain about intrusive police searches.

"It's clearly an act of police exercising control, and it shouldn't be done
to anybody," said Robert A. Jablon, a lawyer who is representing Fernandors
pro bono for the ACLU.

Jablon said late yesterday that the suit had been mistakenly filed in D.C.
Superior Court but would be refiled as a federal suit in U.S. District
Court.

Officers say suspects can sometimes hide weapons or drugs in underwear or a
body cavity, but D.C. police officials say there are strict rules governing
when and where an officer may conduct such searches.

"If they're doing that, they're way, way out of the ballpark," D.C. Police
Chief Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday, noting that officers are not allowed
to search inside a body cavity unless they have a search warrant.

Cheryl Pendergast, commander of the department's 3rd District, said officers
also may not search in a suspect's underwear without having probable cause
to believe that some contraband is hidden there -- and must find a place
"out of public view" to do the search.

The city's Office of Citizen Complaint Review, which has received about 700
complaints about police conduct since January 2001, has had no complaints
during that time about body cavity searches and only one complaint about a
strip search, according to Philip K. Eure, its executive director.

But ACLU attorney Fritz Mulhauser said his organization has surveyed defense
lawyers about instances in which police searched in suspects' underwear and
believes it is common in the District.

"It's not just one officer out of control," he said. "It is a practice."

Fernandors, 20, the plaintiff in the suit, says he had just gotten off work
as a security guard Oct. 10, 2001, and was standing at a bus stop near
Fourth Street and Rhode Island Avenue NE when officers jumped out of an
unmarked car. The officers, who Fernandors said were in plain clothes and
wearing ski masks, allegedly pushed him against a fence, then handcuffed
him.

The suit alleges that an officer put on a latex glove and "searched Mr.
Fernandors' lower body, manipulating Mr. Fernandors' genitals and running
his fingers between the cheeks of Mr. Fernandors' buttocks." During the
search, a line of officers stood to block the view of passersby, Fernandors
said.

Fernandors was eventually arrested and charged with having an open container
of alcohol, a charge he disputes in the suit.

"It disturbed me for a while. I was just so disrespected by it," Fernandors
said in an interview. "For a dude to come up to me and grab me and handcuff
me and touch me in my private area, it's disrespectful."

Fernandors said he never filed a formal complaint with the police department
about the incident. Turner said he filed a complaint with the 3rd Police
District the day after he was searched.

Pendergast, the district commander, said officers were at Turner's apartment
building on the day in question. She said police are investigating whether
any officer searched Turner and his grandfather in the way Turner has
described.