Leaders vow to act on strip searches- philadelphia inquirer

In an effort to stop unlawful strip searches by some police departments, State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf and State Rep. Harold James have called for training all officers on when such invasive body searches are appropriate - and when they are not.

In the last 20 years, federal courts repeatedly have ruled that people arrested for minor crimes can be strip-searched only when there are clear reasons to believe they are hiding drugs or weapons beneath their clothing or within body cavities.

Both said they were responding to an Inquirer investigation in December that found some departments and county jails, including the Delaware County prison, were conducting thousands of strip searches of suspects accused of minor, nonviolent offenses - forcing them to remove their clothing and bend over so that officers could inspect body cavities.

All suspects are strip-searched when they get to the Delaware County prison, regardless of the offense, three guards told The Inquirer in December