TOT STRIP SEARCH
Privates of girl, 4, checked in jail visit with ma
CORRECTION OFFICERS at a lower Manhattan jail stripsearched a 4-year-old girl visiting with her mother — touching the child inappropriately, a new lawsuit alleges.
The officers allegedly conducted the improper search on Sept. 1, when a Queens woman and her daughter went to the Manhattan Detention Complex around 6 p.m to visit her husband.
They passed through a metal detector “without incident” and a police dog inspection found them free of contraband, the woman claims in her Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit.
Nonetheless, a correction officer told the woman she’d been picked for a random “pat-andfrisk” search.
“She was informed that if she refused to submit to the search, she would not be permitted to visit the inmate,” the suit says.
The woman and the little girl were taken to a room with five female officers. One of them searched her in front of the other four “in full view” of her child, the suit says.
She was ordered to “pop your panties” and the correction guard visually inspected her “vagina and anus area” twice.
“It was just embarrassing. It was humiliating,” the woman, whose identity has not been made public because she’s a victim of a sex crime, told the Daily News on Thursday.
“I felt dehumanized. I felt like an inmate.”
The invasive search continued onto her young daughter, the suit, filed by lawyer David Cetron, contends.
“This search involved using their hands to open the child’s pants, underwear and ... touching the child’s buttocks and vaginal area and conducting a visual inspection of these private areas,” court papers say.
“She just stood there — she was powerless, too,” the woman recalled. “She looked at me the whole time. Her face was blank.”
The 29-year-old complained to the officers’ supervisor after their visit — but nothing happened. She called 311 the next day and the city Board of Correction.
According to the civil complaint, she said she endured similar “illegal” searches before two other visits in mid-February 2016 and on Aug. 27.
The woman is not alone in her accusations against the jails system for allegedly illegal strip searches.
Dana Grottano sued the city in November 2015, claiming she was illegally strip searched at Rikers in front of her daughter. Grottano’s lawsuit is ongoing.
Asked about the suit, the city Law Department said, “We will review the complaint with (the Department of Correction) and respond accordingly.”
A department spokesman said video cameras have been installed in all visitor search areas as of October and that the department “has zero tolerance for the mistreatment of visitors ... we take such complaints seriously.”