Weber v. Dell

• Decision Date: 11 March 1986
• Docket Number: No. CIV-84-1041T.,CIV-84-1041T.
• Citation: 630 F. Supp. 255
• Parties: Ann WEBER and Gary J. Weber, Plaintiffs, v. Elizabeth DELL, Officer Janssen Rembert, Investigator Michael Ciminelli, Sgt. R. Hare, Officer Sue Shannon, Officers John Doe, Jane Doe and other unidentified police officers, the City of Rochester Police Department, the City of Rochester and the County of Monroe, and Andrew P. Meloni, Monroe County Sheriff, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of New York

630 F. Supp. 255

Ann WEBER and Gary J. Weber, Plaintiffs, v.Elizabeth DELL, OfficerJanssen Rembert, Investigator Michael Ciminelli, Sgt. R. Hare, OfficerSue Shannon, Officers John Doe, Jane Doe and other unidentified police officers, the City of Rochester Police Department, the City of Rochester and the County of Monroe, and Andrew P. Meloni, MonroeCounty Sheriff, Defendants.

No. CIV-84-1041T.

United States District Court, W.D. New York.

March 11, 1986.

Faraci, Guadagnino, Lange & Johns(Stephen G. Schwarz, of counsel), Rochester, N.Y., for plaintiffs.

Monroe Co. Atty. (Nira T. Kermisch, Asst. Co. Atty., of counsel), Louis N. Kash, Corp.Counsel for the City of Rochester(Michele DiGaetano, Asst. Corp.Counsel, of counsel), Rochester, N.Y., for defendants.

DECISION and ORDER

TELESCA, District Judge.

This is an action brought by plaintiffs against the City of Rochester, several of its police officers and one of its police dispatchers, for injuries arising out of their arrest.Plaintiffs also seek damages from the County of Monroe and its Sheriff, Andrew Meloni for the alleged violation of plaintiffAnn Weber's constitutional rights as a result of her being forced to undergo an illegal strip search and body cavity search at the Monroe County Jail on June 19, 1983.Pending before me are motions by the County and the Sheriff for summary judgment, and a cross-motion by the plaintiffs for partial summary judgment against those defendants.I hold that the plaintiffs' constitutional rights were not violated by the County or the Sheriff as claimed, and therefore grant the County's and the Sheriff's motions for summary judgment and denythe plaintiffs' cross-motion for partial summary judgment.

FACTS

For purposes of this motion, I rely upon the following limited description of the facts of the case which are gleaned from the papers and affidavits supplied by the parties.The City of Rochester chose not to participate in these motions presumably because they dealt only with defendantsCounty of Monroe and Sheriff Meloni.

On June 18, 1983Ann Weber was arrested for charges of resisting arrest and for making a false report of a shooting.Her husband Gary Weber was arrested at the same time and charged with obstruction of governmental administration.¹

The alleged false report was made in order to induce the police to answer a call for assistance when a previous call reporting an episode of malicious mischief went unanswered.For the purposes of this motion it is relevant to point out only that Mrs. Weber was taken by the police at approximately 3:00 A.M. to the Monroe County lockup where she was placed in a holding cell, then booked.

Earlier that evening Ann Weber's daughter, Marilyn Mogenhan had been married in the City of Rochester.When placed in the lockup, Mrs. Weber was still wearing the formal wedding attire she had worn to her daughter's wedding earlier that evening.After she was booked, she was not taken back to the holding cell where arrestees awaiting bail are normally kept.Instead, apparently because the holding area was full, she was taken to a cell in an area of the Monroe County Jail where arraigned pre-trial detainees are housed.

A jail matron then ordered Mrs. Weber to remove all of her clothing.After she did so, she was ordered to alternately face toward and away from the female jailer and bend at the waist.While bending, she was ordered to "spread her cheeks" while the jailer visually inspected her rectal and vaginal areas.After this search, she was placed in a cell for less than 30 minutes until her daughter arrived to post bail.Prior to this episode, she had never been arrested.

After Mr. Weber was booked he was taken to a hospital where he was treated for wounds to his face.

The strip search of Mrs. Weber had been conducted pursuant to a County Jail policy under which any arrestee placed in the County Jail(other than those in the holding area) was strip searched and body cavity searched.The County and the Sheriff claim that this blanket strip/cavity search policy was required by 9 NYCRR § 7502.1(a), which states that, "Before being placed in a cell or detention room, the clothing and person of each prisoner shall be thoroughly searched."At oral argument, the County attorney conceded that the phrase "thoroughly searched" did not necessarily require a strip/cavity search, but that the County Sheriff had interpreted the regulation in that manner, as had other jail administrators in the State.

Plaintiff originally instituted this action against Elizabeth Dell, the City, the police officers, and Monroe County.After the County moved for summary judgment, in part because New York Constitution Article XIII, § 13 forbids imposing liability upon the County for the acts of the Sheriff (seeBarr v. County of Albany,50 N.Y.2d 247, 428 N.Y.S.2d 665, 406 N.E.2d 481(1980)), plaintiffs moved for leave to add the County Sheriff as a defendant, which leave was granted.The County has renewed its motion for summary judgment based on Article XIII, and also argues that the strip search policy was constitutional, and that (if the policy was not constitutional) the County is nevertheless immune from damage liability because the Sheriff adopted the policy in good faith reliance upon Bell v. Wolfish,441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447(1979).The Sheriff has also moved for summary judgment, raising the same arguments raised by the County (except Article XIII).Plaintiffs have cross-moved for partial summary judgment against the County and the Sheriff, relying on cases from several circuit courts of appeals holding that a blanket strip search policy is unconstitutional.

As set forth below, I hold that the strip search policy implemented by the Sheriff is constitutional under the authority of Bell v. Wolfish and its progeny, and I grant summary judgment to the County and the Sheriff on that authority.

DISCUSSION

The plaintiffs in Bell v. Wolfish challenged numerous conditions of their confinement at the pre-trial detention facility in New York City and various policies and practices of that institution.The Supreme Court sustained against a Fourth Amendment challenge the practice of conducting routine body cavity searches of these pretrial detainees following contact visits, even though there had been only one reported attempt to smuggle contraband into the facility in a body cavity.441 U.S. at 558-60, 99 S.Ct. at 1884-85.Although the Court admitted that the practice of conducting these searches "instinctively gave it the most pause,"id., it balanced this against the prison's interest in maintaining security, and concluded that this practice did not violate the Fourth Amendment.The balancing test it applied is worth quoting at length:

The test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application.In each case it requires a balancing of the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails.Courts must consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it is conducted.A detention facility is a unique place fraught with serious security dangers.Smuggling of money, drugs, weapons, and other contraband is all too common an occurrence.And inmate attempts to secrete these items into the facility by concealing them in body cavities are documented in this record, and in other cases.That there has been only one instance where an MCC inmate was discovered attempting to smuggle contraband into the institution on his person may be more a testament to the effectiveness of this search technique as a deterrent than to any lack of interest on the part of the inmates to secrete and import such items when the opportunity arises.

441 U.S. at 559, 99 S.Ct. at 1884-85(citations omitted).

The Court stated specifically that probable cause was not required before a body cavity search could be conducted on these inmates.441 U.S. at 560, 99 S.Ct. at 1885.The Court also stated that the existence of less intrusive and equally effective alternatives to body cavity inspections did not render such inspections unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, as long as the alternative chosen by the prison administrators was not irrational or unreasonable.441 U.S. 559, n. 40, 99 S.Ct. at 1884-85, n. 40.

The Court added a gloss to Bell v. Wolfish in the 1984case of Block v. Rutherford,468 U.S. 576, 104 S.Ct. 3227, 82 L.Ed.2d 438(1984).Block was a Fourteenth Amendment case rather than a Fourth Amendment case, because in Block the prison administrators had chosen to ban contact visits entirely, rather than conduct any searches of inmates returning from contact visits.In Block,the Court again emphasized that it was unwilling to substitute its judgment on the difficult and sensitive matters of institutional administration and security for that of the persons who were actually charged with and trained in the running of such facilities.104 S.Ct. at 3233.It took judicial notice that the unauthorized use of narcotics is a problem that plagues virtually every penal and detention center in the country, then reversed the District Court's decision holding that a limited program of contact visits was constitutionally required:

On this record, we must conclude that the District Court simply misperceived the limited scope of judicial inquiry under Wolfish.When the District Court found that many factors counseled against contact visits, its inquiry should have ended.The Court's further "balancing" resulted in an impermissible substitution of its view on the proper administration of Central Jail for that of the experienced administrators of that facility.Here, as in Wolfish,"it is plain from the opinions that the lower court simply disagreed with the judgment of the jail officials about the extent of the security

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