Beyond speechless — as if police sadism with Tasers isn’t enough to give you agita, look at what occurred during a traffic stop in Albany, NY:
It was early evening and already dark when the patrol car’s emergency lights flashed in the rearview mirror of Lisa Shutter’s Mitsubishi sedan on Quail Street, just off Central Avenue.Even worse, Shutter is watching the wagons circle…read on, it gets worse after the jump.Police records show the officers called out a “Signal 38″ to alert a dispatcher they were onto something suspicious and about to pull someone over. They would later write in a report that they had pulled her over for “failure to signal,” although no ticket was issued, according to police records shared with the Times Union.
The actions of police in the minutes that followed would end in controversy rather than with an arrest. They would also leave Shutter, a 28-year-old single mother from Ravena, shaken and angry after one of the officers allegedly inserted his finger into Shutter’s vagina on a public street during an apparent search for drugs.
When it was over, “I pulled off down the road and I just cried for probably a half hour,” Shutter said. “I called my dad. … I felt like I had been basically raped.” The incident has triggered an ongoing internal affairs investigation by the Albany Police Department.
This is an outrage — why, you might ask was Shutter really pulled over? According to the officers on the scene, they told her she “fit the profile.”One of the officers at the scene, Matthew Fargione, is the son of a former Albany police narcotics lieutenant, Thomas Fargione, who is a longtime friend of Chief James W. Tuffey. Fargione headed the drug unit for years when Tuffey was a narcotics detective in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the two men also worked together for the State Emergency Management Office.
…A member of the Citizens’ Police Review Board, who spoke on condition of anonymity because only the chairman is authorized to make public statements, said some members of the board have privately suspected that the department may be hiding cases of police misconduct.
…Shutter said she grew increasingly unnerved by her experience with internal affairs — which is known as the Office of Professional Standards — because male detectives twice requested she wear clothes from the night of the incident to re-enact the body search.
Tuffey declined to comment on a list of written questions submitted by the Times Union last week, including why internal affairs officials didn’t assign a female detective on Shutter’s case.
The incident unfolded just after 7 p.m. on Dec. 22. Shutter said she’d just finished some last-minute holiday shopping and became confused as she drove through West Hill looking for a friend she’d agreed to pick up that night.This an outrage beyond belief. Here is the web page for the Albany Police Department. Note the ironic mission statement.Shutter was behind the wheel of a friend’s rented car, and said she saw the police car drive past her twice before the stop.
The officer at her window grilled her about drug use and hidden crack pipes, she said. “You fit the profile,” the officer said, according to Shutter. “You’re a white girl in a rental car.”
It is the mission of the Albany Police Department to serve all people with integrity and respect, while enhancing the quality of their lives. The department is committed to the service of the community through efficient and effective policing, maintaining the highest level of integrity, ethics and honesty while promoting the professionalism of departmental personnel and treating the public with respect and dignity regardless of an individuals demographic background.
Hat tip, Feministing.
42 Responses to “Albany, NY police allegedly sexually violate woman during ‘traffic stop’”
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Fit the profile? A white girl in a rental car is suspicious? Is it the white girl or the rental car that’s suspicious?
Or is this code for something else? Do the cops in Albany make a habit of targeting white females in rental cars to sexually assault, thinking they’re out-of-towners and they won’t come back to press charges?
There are times that I think every cop in the country should be tossed in the clink. Just start over with all new officers.
Forget abortion, they’re using the “sodomized virgin” test for rape now. Was her rental car wearing a short skirt?
I saw this over at feministing and I’m still trying to process it. The thing I find most disturbing is that I strongly suspect that this is making news precisely because the victim is a youngish white woman. I doubt that this is the first time these cops have done something like this.
If they did find crack hidden in her vagina how exactly do they plan to explain in court their search procedure?
Times like these that I wish that Vagina Dentata wasn’t just a myth.
Guys don’t just suddenly do this one day. They work up to it. This guy learned it at his father’s knee and tried it out on women who he knew wouldn’t be believed.
Wow, like Ms. Kate, I am wishin’ I could implant a mini-bear trap down there! I find it very telling that they drove past her twice ….checking out whether she looked good enough to have their ‘fun’ with, that is how it sounds to me. I hope someone helps her sue the crap out of them.
I lived in Albany for 11 years. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The APD has a long history of abuse, most of which gets swept under the rug.
togolosh - probably would’ve tossed it in the car, on the seat and said it was visible upon stopping her and therefore used it as double duty — saying it was in plain sight, therefore an obvious violation allowing arrest, after which they needed no warrant or consent to search the car. (Where I bet they would’ve “found” more contraband just to seal the deal.)
This may not be current.
Thomas Fargione
Office (518) 292-2200
Fax: (518) 322-4982
thomas.fargione@semo.state.ny.us
That is seriously messed up. Not terribly surprising, what with assholes with a little power using it to fuck with people (literally, in this case) being quite common and police forces crawling with them, but still messed up.
I wonder how many other women this sort of thing has happened to who didn’t raise a stink about it.
So…I suppose what I’m stuck on, is not just the initial outrage… (I, growing up, was taught to trust police…so yeah…)
But in the follow-up…they’re making her wear the same clothing, for re-enactments? Just how ‘far’ will those reenactments go? and what then?
*sigh*
If true, inexcusable and they should be gone.
However, people lie all the time (ask a judge).
Makes you wish there was a concealed camera and microphone in the rental car. Even if there were cameras in the police car, they would have undoubtedly been tampered with by this time.
Mold–Did you notice that no cop or anyone else in authority explicitly denied that this happened?
However, people lie all the time (ask a judge).
Yeah, history is full of corrupt judges - oh wait, you were trying to sneakily & with plausible deniability say that women are all liars, even when it comes to humiliating themselves before our sexist, patriarchal society.
Sounds like Mold-for-brains, Proud Defender Of The Status Quo, all right.
(Are you sure you’re not actually Ken Hansen from Boing Boing?)
What the hell??
I rent a car — for any reason — and I’m fair game to be finger-fucked by any cop for any “reason”??
It was important enough to search her, and yet not important enough to take her to the station to be searched by a female officer???
And nobody has been fired yet???
YEEPS! As a management consultant, I (and thousands of my co-workers) rent cars in strange cities every week. If there are more white women selling drugs out of rental cars than folks in my profession, I’ll be shocked. This is total BS. White woman alone in a rental car mostly equals someone who is having her car worked on or is on business travel.
Unless this officer can show a warrant or some basis for this being a reasonable search, I believe he may have committed the crime of aggravated sexual abuse in the third degree. See N.Y. Penal Laws Section 130.66. http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menugetf.cgi?COMMONQUERY=LAWS
i’m having a feeling that since the woman wasn’t actually fucking charged with anything, not even a ticket, Mold, that she has no reason to lie about this, like to get out of a traffic ticket or whatever.
what the fuck is wrong with you?
Sorry, that website address just takes you to a location where you can search for the N.Y. statute in question. The actual statute reads as follows:
This should be a bigger story. It makes me so angry and ruins my day. If this happened to my wife, somebody would be going down hard in the worse way. I realize this might reveal the sexist “property holder” part of me but there you go. It should trigger some type of anger in anyone for so many reasons, even other cops.
This isn’t so bad. Our local PD has lost a lot of good officers because inadequately-searched women produced a firearm from their vagina.
/sarcasm
L1, that might be a property-holder attitude, but not necessarily. If you’d take the same level/sort of offense to a cop cramming a finger up your asshole, then I’d wager that’s just normal concern for your partner.
I believe I know what profile she fit: woman not from around here, and probably not so uppity to press charges in a jurisdiction she wasn’t resident in. A woman who would probably feel too shamed that she was violated at all to go public.
I want to curse and scream.
Feminism is equality. Women don’t get a pass for gender (see Homolka).
If true, there just is no excuse. I can’t justify the actions in any way. If no female officers are available, they can use the local jail or the hospital if contraband was suspected.
Call me cynical. I’ve seen women lie for far less.
Mold - what incentive does she have to lie? She knows damn well that it’s he said/she said, with the benefit of the doubt going to the cop. Why assume she’s lying rather than that the cop’s a scumbag? Face it - there’s no reason other than a kneejerk assumption that women should be presumed to be lying about sexual assault.
Call me cynical. I’ve seen women lie for far less.
Less than what? What motive would she have to lie, since she wasn’t charged with anything? And again, please note that none of the cops are denying this happened.
There’s cynicism, and then there’s willful blindness.
{There’s cynicism, and then there’s willful blindness. }
Nope; that’s neither. That’s *hatred* …and it’s tiresome.
86 Mold-for-brains, already.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?category=REGIONOTHER&storyID=668451&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=3/2/2008
jesus christ.
Please, get a camera into a rental car and cruise albany with a wire and full news crew!! tout suite!!
But bluebonnet, black men lie for far less … [/sarcasm]
Mold, you haven’t “seen” fuck-all, and you know it. Your misogynistic little fantasies are of no importance. “The bitchez are lying just to get guys in trouble. You know they lie because they bleed from the crotch and they’re all stupid and stuff.” Horseshit.
Mold- the fact that you said “women lie for far less” instead of “people lie for far less” is telling. Reminds me of a certain comic: How it Works.
http://xkcd.com/385/
But is it even ok to have her cavity searched by a woman at the station? Is that not sexual assault too? State-sanctioned sexual assault no less..
But is it even ok for her to be cavity searched by a woman at the station? Isn’t that also sexual assault? State-sanctioned sexual assault no less…
is there a fund being set up, to help her get legal aid? or actually, does she need one? this might qualify for other aid (ACLU, anyone?) - and help other people who were fucked over in this area (al la bluebonnet)
i have to ask… am i in the United States of America? cuz seriously, i think i woke up in Bizzaro America a decade (or 2) ago… and it just keeps getting worse and worse…
Let’s hope that, when the lawsuit gets filed, the people of Albany are smarter and less police-enamored than here in “the O.C.”:
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/illegally-park-ed/26661/
bluebonnet, OMG. That link to yet another Albany PD assault is mindboggling. Apparently they are equal opportunity rapists.
Nope, not if she’s under arrest. I myself have been strip-searched, although they left my er cavity alone.If they’re actually going to stick a finger in it, I should think it would warrant the raising of eyebrows, however. EDIT: I would think that it should. I don’t think that it would.
There’s a reason they’re called “pigs,” my friends.
Great Christ a-mighty, and I thought the cops in Austin were bad.
However, people lie all the time
Mold apparently doesn’t believe that peace officers are “people”. Why does he hate law-enforcement personnel?
I don’t know if this is a new strategy amongst misogynists, but I, for one, am impressed by mold’s bald-faced deviance.
What he’s attempting here, is to claim that–since feminism says women are the equal of men–it is impossible to discriminate against women. If women and men are equal, then, by definition, it is impossible for men to treat women as an underclass. And if that is so, then it is “obvious” that this woman’s (and any woman’s) claim about being assaulted is a lie.
Bravo mold, and fuck you.
I meant to say “bald-faced deviousness”, but you know what? Mold’s probably a deviant, too.