Pay your hospital bill you Swine!

IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.

Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County, N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession.

Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and an officer wrote that Eckerts posture was erect and he kept his legs together.

That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital emergency room and asked the doctor, Adam Ash, to conduct a forcible search of his rectum. Dr. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.

"I was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do," Dr. Ash told me. "It was not medically indicated."

Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn't actually been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of Eckert's abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.

Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second enema was administered. Then a third.

The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert's searches were public, the lawsuit says.

After hours of fruitless searches, police and doctors arranged another X-ray and finally anesthetized Eckert and performed a colonoscopy.

Nothing was found inside of Mr. Eckert, the police report notes. So after he woke up, he was released after 13 hours, two rectal exams, three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy.

The hospital ended up billing Eckert $6,000.

When I came across this case, it seemed far-fetched to me more like rape than law enforcement. But the authorities, hospital and doctors all refused to comment, and, a few days ago, the city and county settled the lawsuit by paying Eckert $1.6 million.

This wasn't a unique case. A few months earlier, a man named Timothy Young who lives nearby says that police officers pulled him over, forcibly strip-searched him in a parking lot and then took him to a hospital for a forced X-ray and rectal examination while he was handcuffed. Nothing was found, so he was released only to receive a hospital bill.

And a few weeks before Eckert's ordeal, a 54-year-old American woman crossing from Mexico into El Paso was strip-searched and taken to the University Medical Center of El Paso. She says in a lawsuit that, over six hours, she was shackled to an examination table and subjected to rectal and vaginal examinations with the door open to compound her humiliation. After a final X-ray and CT scan, all of which turned up nothing, she was released and billed for the procedures.

Joseph P. Kennedy, Eckert's lawyer, notes that such abuses are not random but are disproportionately directed at those on the bottom rungs of society. "It's a socioeconomic issue," he said. "It's the indignities forced on people who are not articulate, not educated and don't have access to legal services."

Police are caught in a difficult balancing act, and obviously the abuse of Eckert isn't representative. But it is emblematic of something much larger in America, a kind of inequality that isn't economic and that we don't much talk about.

That's all funny stuff. 'specially Seen-it-all " I guess by running a small roofing company you just get immuned to bending over and taking it from everyone from every angle. "

Oh how true that feels at times.

Not to minimize what Mr. Eckert went through but.......

I've had a few 13 hour days on the roof where I've come home feeling like I have gone through the same ordeal as Mr. Eckert but never made 1.6 mil for my efforts. After a day like that I would only hope I would break even on the whole job. I guess by running a small roofing company you just get immuned to bending over and taking it from everyone from every angle. :(

Mike H

Once Egg started using paragraphs it had to come out. "Best laid plans of mice and men"

"egg" is actually just one of the many pen names lefty's been using for years. He dreamed up the forum just so he could talk things over with himself. Vicky the Boss is another one. Actually since troop and Tom Hay left it's just you and him now. Well, you and the King and that other Mike that y'all pretend lives in New Zealand. So yeah, just you and him. I was hoping that wouldn't get out.

egg Said: ...

it wont be taking too many more million dollar judgements to put a stop to this type of search and seizure. Counties arent going to consider them a very good return on investment.

Did Lefty write that for you? ;)

Aside from the main subject at hand essentially concerning illegal search and seizure (aren't we allowed to assume that our bodies are our own property?) this is one of the main reasons some of us have come to loathe the medical profession. They've sold their souls to Mammon. Yes they've found ways to extend our lives, in fact I would have died forty-five years ago without medical advances in surgery, but it's often far beyond any tangible benefit to us, as if we truly want to live an extra decade overwhelmed by dementia, but they show plenty of evidence of being much more interested in technology, drugs, and making money than in anything even remotely related to real health and happiness. The longer they can keep us alive, the more profit they can reap off a stable crop of known vegetables. I'm not looking forward to it and it's no doubt coming sooner than I want to admit.

Sticking completely to the subject, it won't be taking too many more million dollar judgements to put a stop to this type of search and seizure. Counties aren't going to consider them a very good return on investment.

Last year at the Oregon coast, a swimmer was caught in a riptide and carried out, a young man saw what was happening and swam out and drug the now unconscious swimmer back to shore to start cpr. The paramedics arrived and when they took the victim away, they wanted the young hero to go and be checked out. He initially refused, saying he was fine, but finally relented. When he was released from the hospital, he was handed a bill for $7200.

After the publicity came out, an anonymous donor paid his bill. Paramedics need to be trained what it's like out in the real world.

If you look in your old high school yearbook, you will be surprised at how many of the kids that were picked on and in remedial reading and lower tier school work are now policemen and women. They get to have the power and they use it too. That is sad, but I am sure so very true. I hope the rest of the victims sue the shit out of the police departments and the head officers get fired.