Awful

Texan Women Sue State Troopers For Humiliating Roadside Cavity Searches

In our “EW, WHAT?!” story of the day: two Irving women are suing state troopers and their department head after being subjected to a “humiliating and violating” cavity search during a traffic stop.

While road tripping to Oklahoma, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her niece 24-year-old Ashley Dobbs were pulled over for tossing cigarette butts out of their car window. According to the women’s attorney, Trooper David Farrell alleged he could smell marijuana emanating from their vehicle and performed a routine search, finding nothing. Instead of ending the ordeal, Farrell called in a female trooper, Kelley Helleson, to perform a cavity search on the women.

Angel Dobbs claims that Trooper Helleson put on gloves and asked for permission to perform the search. When Dobbs instead asked why the trooper had put on gloves, she was told to “shut up and just listen.” Dashcam video shows the female trooper searching the Dobbs’ anuses and vaginas on the side of the road, using the same latex glove throughout the search. “She went down, then turned me around, and went down my front and then she actually dug,” Ashley Dobbs said of the incident. “I didn’t know what I could say, what I could do. I felt hopeless.”

When the body cavity search also turned up nothing, Angel Dobbs was given a sobriety test, which she passed. Additionally, Ashley Dobbs alleges that one of the troopers took her bottle of prescription Vicodin. The women were allowed to leave after troopers wrote them a ticket for littering, so that all definitely seems worth it. When the women when to the Texas Department of Public Safety with a complaint, they claim they were told that they would be charged with lying if an affidavit was filed.

How did the troopers justify performing a cavity search even after their initial search turned up nothing? According to attorney Scott Palmer, Trooper Farrell thought the women were “acting weird”. Acting weird? You know you’re not doing the whole “justice thing” correctly when you use the same reasoning I do when hacking into my boyfriend’s emails. Well, EX-boyfriend’s emails. I still love you, Josh!

 

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