From: lewrockwell.com
In Utah, as
elsewhere in the Soyuz, “battering” a police
officer is considered an especially grievous crime. Until earlier
this year, this offense was treated as a Class A misdemeanor.
Under
SB 131, a measure enacted earlier this year by the state legislature,
it is now a
class C felony.
Any incidental
contact between a Mundane and the sanctified personage of a police
officer – including the act of breathing on an officer –
can be prosecuted as “battery.” This would apply to
cases in which a woman is
desperately trying to prevent an officer from violating her sexually:
A victim
who puts up resistance in such circumstances can expect to be violently
subdued, arrested, and charged with “assaulting an officer.”
In Utah, a
victim of a sexual assault by a police officer could easily find
herself convicted of a felony unless she submits with docility to
whatever the armed predator is willing to inflict on her. On the
other hand, if the officer is exposed as a sex offender, it’s
quite likely that he would face misdemeanor charges. This is illustrated
by the case of former Box Elder County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott
Womack, who is facing multiple lawsuits and criminal charges
involving illegal strip-searches of young women conducted during
traffic stops over a period of about two years.
In February,
Womack
pleaded no contest to three counts of attempted custodial misconduct
– which is a misdemeanor offense. In exchange for Womack’s
plea, county prosecutors dropped nine additional charges –
all of them misdemeanors, as well.
Under the plea
bargain agreement, Womack’s name would not be permanently
inscribed in the sex offender registry – despite the fact
that his acts are, by definition, those of a violent sex offender.
Since the charges against him are misdemeanors, Womack would eventually
be eligible for the restoration of his peace officer certification.
Womack
does face federal criminal charges and federal lawsuits filed
by three of his victims, but it’s likely that most, if not
all, of the trouble he faces would be made to disappear once the
first state case against him is closed.
After he was
arraigned, Womack was compelled to surrender his passport and to
avoid contact with the victims. However, he has been free during
the legal proceedings. During a court hearing in early May, Womack
– surrounded by family and other supportive spectators –
“waited for the judge to call his case sitting in a back room
of the court, shrouded by blinds that court workers said [are] typically
reserved for victims who do not want to be seen by defendants,”
reported
the Salt Lake Tribune.
In other words,
the impenitent predator was dealt with as if he were the victim,
cosseted and sheltered and treated with gentle deference. He has
been allowed to remain at large despite the fact that at least one
of the victims, Brigham City resident Holly Griffin, said that she
was afraid of retaliation by Womack “because he had my address.”
Griffin’s
fears were amply justified. During a traffic stop not far from her
home, Womack – in what would emerge as his modus operandi
– claimed that Griffin was wanted on a narcotics warrant,
and would be handcuffed and taken to the county jail unless she
submitted to an invasive inspection for tattoos, piercings, and
other identifiers.
“When
he returned to my car [after getting the driver’s license
and registration], he explained that there was a warrant out for
me in Summit County,” Griffin
told the Salt Lake City ABC affiliate. “I told him I had
not been to Summit County in a few years and that I had never done
anything wrong in my life.”
Womack presented
Griffin with two options: Submit to a partial strip search, or go
to jail. When she requested that a female officer conduct the search,
Womack replied that none was available.
“He asked
me to life up my shirt up to my bra, lift down my pants to expose
my upper thigh, and to show my lower leg,” the victim recounts.
After she had satisfied the armed stranger’s demands, Womack
released her without issuing a citation or a warning. Understandably
traumatized by her experience, Griffin didn’t file a complaint
– until after another victim, 18-year-old Tamsen Reid, filed
a federal lawsuit against Womack and Box Elder County.
On November
20, 2010, Reid – who was 17 at the time – was one of
five teenagers in a car that was stopped by Womack during a snowstorm.
Womack claimed that the driver was speeding. After noticing that
one of the teens was smoking, Womack ordered the driver and the
passengers out of the car to search the vehicle for drugs.
After running
the IDs of the five teenagers, Womack claimed that three of them
– all of them young women, wouldn’t you know –
had outstanding drug warrants in other jurisdictions. He had Reid
and her female friends stand barefoot in the snow while lifting
up their shirts and their bras, ostensibly to search for drugs.
For some reason,
the costumed creeper took a special interest in Reid. Womack claimed
that Reid was wanted in that state for heroin possession. This led
the young woman, who had not been to Arizona and had never done
heroin, to suggest that she might be the victim of identity theft.
Displaying
the affected solicitude of a practiced molester, Womack told the
frightened girl that she could clear things up right away, if she
would simply get into his patrol vehicle and undress so he could
inspect her for distinctive tattoos and piercings. Her only other
alternative was to be handcuffed and booked into jail.
Terrified,
and most likely nauseous, Reid complied. This prompted the predator
to escalate his demands: He claimed that it was necessary for the
teenager to spread her legs in order for him to determine if she
had a distinctive tattoo in her genital region. At that point, Reid
finally rebelled, telling the perverted stranger that the examination
was over. Womack issued a warning to the driver, and the teenagers
went on their way.
At the time,
Reid later recalled, the teens were relieved, rather than outraged,
because nobody got a ticket.
About ten months
later, following her 18th birthday, Reid contacted the
Box Elder Sheriff’s Office to have the spurious drug warrant
removed from her record. The clerk with whom Reid spoke informed
her that there was no warrant, and never had been.
Reid also found
out that Womack didn’t file a record of the traffic stop or
the warning he had issued to the driver. She was also told that
her that several other complaints had been received about Womack’s
behavior.
Shortly after
Reid filed a lawsuit against Box Elder County, Womack was allowed
to “leave employment” at the Sheriff’s Office
– but he was permitted to keep his law enforcement certification
until the lawsuit was made public. By that time it had been known,
for more than a year, that Womack was in the habit of conducting
undocumented traffic stops in which he neither filed reports nor
turned on his dashcam recorder.
|
In the August
2011 press conference announcing her lawsuit, Reid insisted that,
however inexplicably, she still “believed in law enforcement,”
but that her experience left her experiencing nightmares that would
cause her to “wake up screaming.”
The indelible
trauma experienced by Reid and Womack’s other victims could
easily have turned out even worse if any of them had put up even
the slightest physical resistance to the deputy’s sexual assaults.
Reid, who was
undressed and alone in Deputy Aqualung’s
Creepmobile,
might consider herself to be blessed: If Womack had decided not
to let the victim leave after she refused to undergo a genital examination,
Reid most likely would have been arrested for resisting arrest and
“assaulting” the sexual predator who had detained her.
Womack is hardly
the first uniformed sociopath to force females to disrobe at gunpoint.
In
2009, the City of Scottsdale, Arizona hit up local tax victims to
pay a $315,000 settlement to a 19-year-old woman who was the victim
of a similar sexual assault by former Police officer Chong Kim.
In that case, the 19-year-old made the mistake of calling the police
for “help” with intruders in her apartment. When Chong
arrived, he noticed that the teenager had been drinking, a
fact that he used as leverage to order her to “get naked.”
After that woman filed a complaint, it
was discovered that Chong had committed similar crimes against as
many as 20 other women. Chong was forced to resign. There is
no record of him being prosecuted for his crimes.
Under SB 131,
the newly enacted Utah law on “battering” a law enforcement
officer, a future victim of a similar sexual assault by a cop –
and there will be others – could be charged with a
felony if she tries to escape.
During a February
7 Utah Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on SB 131, State
Senator Aaron Osmond explained that he filed the bill in response
to a “constituent request” from a police officer in
his district. Osmond
recruited four students from Copper Hills High School to serve as
“co-presenters” of the bill.
Each
of these earnest young people dutifully recited pious platitudes
about the sterling nobility of the state’s armed enforcement
caste, the all-encompassing danger in which they constantly find
themselves, the vulgar ingratitude of those who would criticize
them, and the moral obligation of the public “to protect them”
(yes, one witness actually used those words).
The last witness,
a young woman named Allison (whose last name I will not mention),
denounced “aggressors” who would do injury to “the
heroes who promote our well-being every day…. Let’s
do all we can to increase the safety of our honorable officers.”
Dear Allison:
Have you met Tamsen Reid? I’m sure she would be interested
in having a chat with you about the uniformed hero who was so zealous
to promote Reid’s “well-being” that he tried to
force her, at gunpoint, to undergo an unauthorized gynecological
exam in his patrol vehicle.
May
27, 2013
William
Norman Grigg [send him mail]
publishes the Pro
Libertate blog and hosts the Pro
Libertate radio program.
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