Is it normal for police/agents of the state to touch our private areas?

[reggie the dog]

As a pre teen and teen i had the cops feel my penis and balls many many times. why? i really dont know. one minute i would be riding my bicycle through town, the next the cops would stop us, put us up against a wall or a tree and because we "looked like druggies" (at 11 12 13 yrs old i hadnt even touched pot or drugs yet) they then felt our privates, squeezed our balls till it hurt, called us girls for not being able to take the pain, said we had small dicks, said we enjoyed it and were thus "fucking faggots". when i see the videos of tsa agents in airports it brings back memories of when this happened to me. hell after they did it to us once when we were 14 i told the cops straight up that i was going to start doing weed because i already had to submit to being insulted and groped by cops and may as well enjoy getting high.

Do you think it is normal that police in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, did this to pre teens and teens in the early 90's? is it normal for the tsa to put their hands in our pants? those of our kids?

i have been told on another thread that no one cares about my story so i am assuming that being stopped for biking and having a cop feel ones private areas has happend to pretty much all of us from gen X on down and that i should just deal with it like everyone else has but i still think it is wrong.

what do you all think?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Normal? Hell, it's not even legal.

Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[reggie the dog]

2. it is not legal yet cops do it every day

they always had probable cause, we "looked like druggies", that is all they needed to say. whenever i told the cops they had no right to do what they were doing they also punched or kicked me, hit me in the back of the knee with their clubs. after a while we just started to run from them. throw the bike over a fence, hop the fence and hit it fast on the bikes, we were never caught and didnt have to get molested or beaten anymore.

[InkAddict]

3. It's a shame that happened to you.

I remember my teen daughters telling me about the female cop they nicknamed "Robo Cop" stopping and harassing them as they zipped down the road on a nice day with the windows open while they sang out (yelled out) the lyrics to a very loud "hip-hop" tune allowed to air on the radio that included plenty of "M_Fs." Airtime: 2 minutes +???????? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Ahhhh...the freedoms of youth.

Would that have happened if...oh never mind; that would not really play well on DU, so I left out some "colorful" adjectives in the story. You too?

I'm reminded of a phrase I heard once; it seems one of my "consciences" spouts it back to me daily anymore. It goes like this: "Lack of bravery, i.e., accepting the consequences of busting the myths) on your part at the time does not constitute my need to apologize or pay restitution for your personal PTSD-evoking experiences now." It's a stern hind-sight critic I'm learning to deal with and thus I cannot and need not apologize to you for those crimes against your young psyche. PS: Still learning to be less fearful of recriminations for bucking bad-cop authoritarians.

If your tale is true, do you have badge number? Did you tell your folks at the time? What about corroboration of your story by friends who were with you at the time? What have you left out about clashing behaviors on those days to which you refer?

I guess all that's left is to tell you to claim "personal" reasons for not going to airports and/or flying nowadays. This probably can't fly as a SEVERE limitation of your daily activities, but hey...most paranoia stems from some truthiness from past learning, no? But, I'm just not the one to condemn your experiences and I won't.

[reggie the dog]

7. at first we didnt clash with the cops

we were more amazed at being stopped than anything. my friends would be there often times the "clean cut "looking ones didnt get searched and those of us who looked like hippies or punks would. i never told my parents that they touched us like that when they searched, possibly because the cops would say stuff like "you know you liked it you fucking faggot" and being gay, at the time, was the worst thing i could imagine and as a virgin i had never had sexual contact with a female.

later on we would get lippy with the cops real fast which would not help and eventually we would just run, speed off, or hide whenever we saw the cops.

the problem is that i live in france and flying is the only easy way to get back to the usa and when it is time to go back to france i have to pass aiport security in the usa. if i see them frisk my 3 year old in between her legs i am liable to freak out.

i never liked that the govt can just treat us all like prisoners and search us "for our own good"

[Johnny Harpo]

4. Tell Us More.....

What time of day did this happen?...morning-noon-night....2 AM?

Were you alone or with friends?

Were you just riding along or 'acting the fool'?

Did you 'mouth off' to the cops?

Did you tell your parents this happend?...if not why not?

Do you remember the cops names and/or badge numbers?

Have you been 'just thinking' about this or 'truly bothered' by it?

Perhaps this could grounds for a post-tramatic lawsuit...it seems to be working for choir boys.

[reggie the dog]

6. some answers

it would happen mostly in the afternoon and sometimes at night but we had to be in by 1130 pm due to curfew law so it wasnt at 2 am.

we would be riding in a small group, 5 buddies on average but they would only search some of us, the same ones over and over again, me and opey sometimes ryan, never vince who looked "clean cut"

we would be riding and sometimes jumping up or down a curb on our bmx bikes

when the cops would stop us at first we didnt mouth off, we were only about 11, later on we would because we knew they would be searching us for drugs anyways because we "looked like druggies" but when you told them that they didnt have the right to just stop you for riding a bike they said they were cops and could do what they wanted

i told my parents that they would stop us but didnt tell them how the cops would feel our privates and make fun of us

never took their badge number because at the time i thought they had a right to do that to just stop anyone a look for drugs

i had stopped thinking about this for the longenst time but when i see the searches carried out at random by the tsa it brings the memories back.
at the time it really bothered me to the point that we started running from the cops even though we didnt even use drugs yet, quite often when we ran we ran just to not have them search us but had nothing illegal anyways. when you are 13 and are not popular with the girls and the only sexual contact you get is when a grown man in uniform feels you real good to make sure you have no drugs in your underwear you are not too inclined to speak up about it. The worst was that when they would search and find nothing they were mad because they were so convinced that we were crooks. it stopped once i got a car and no longer rode my bike around. a couple of times in college i was stopped again just for riding a bike but when they found out i was in my 20's and riding for a work out they got nice real fast and didnt search.

i am never going to sue the cops out of fear. once when we were driving in my cousin's car they stopped us, searched, got mad because we had nothing and threw a big bag of crack into the car. we only got off because my uncle owned a business and my cus's girlfriends dad was a high ranking official in another town. they called their parents on their cell phones and the parents told the cops they had better not be framing us or else they would be fucked and it worked. the cops intially said we looked like drug dealers because we were teens in a nice car and had cell phones, funny thing is that our parents bought us our cars and cell phones. i even asked the cop "what is the point of being rich if you cant buy your kid a car?" they took their crack and left us alone.

[Xenotime]

5. Who is really to decide what is right or wrong?