Strip search by N.J. state trooper draws protest
Driver probed in full sight of passing motorists
A bodycam video that shows a New Jersey state trooper conducting a roadside strip search has raised questions about how far law enforcement officers are permitted to go during a traffic stop.
Trooper Joseph Drew pulled a car over for tailgating and said he smelled marijuana. When a search of the car turned up nothing, he handcuffed the driver and told him to step out of the vehicle.
“You can tell me where it is right now or I can go in and get it,” Drew says on the video.
The trooper is then seen pulling on blue latex gloves, reaching into the driver’s underwear, and groping his genitals and buttocks while the two stand on Route 206 in Southampton, Burlington County. All the while, trucks and cars pass by on the busy highway.
The driver, a 23-year-old Toms River, New Jersey, man, insisted several times he had no marijuana and said he doubted such a search was legal.
No drugs were found in the man’s car or on his body, and in the end he was issued a ticket for tailgating. The driver has filed notice of intention to sue, alleging that he was sexually assaulted and that his civil rights were violated.
In the video, the driver can be heard protesting that he is being sexually assaulted as the trooper repeatedly touches his genitals during a four-minute search of the man’s underwear.
Earlier, the trooper checked the man’s pockets and socks and ordered him to turn over drugs, the video shows. Then he told him, “If you think this is the worst I’m going to do, you have another think coming, my friend.”
Experts in policing were critical of the trooper’s actions.
Maria Haberfeld, a professor of policing and police ethics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an author of several books on the subject, said the search was unwarranted.
“To reach into someone’s underwear, it has to be for a really good reason, not for marijuana,” she said. “In the times when marijuana has been legalized in state after state, this is some kind of erratic police behavior — and it’s very much about discretion, so even if you can do things, should you be doing them?”
State Police Internal Affairs is investigating the incident, which occurred on March 8, 2017. Drew and a backup trooper, Andrew Whitmore, are still on patrol pending the outcome of that inquiry. Neither could be reached for comment, and their union, the New Jersey State Police Fraternal Association, said it would have to check with its lawyer before releasing any statement on the matter.
The incident came to light last week, when the video was posted on the website of John Paff, who heads New Jersey Libertarians for Transparency, an open-government group. Paff obtained the bodycam and dashcam videos of both troopers after filing open public records requests in January. He was checking the court docket, as he does routinely, and came across the driver’s legal filing.
The video shocked him. “It was extreme, in my view, because of the cavalier attitude, the way this cop acted,” he said. “This is outrageous.”