Now the police department is suing the TV station who exposed it.
I haven't written a diary in ages, but this story from The Cleveland Leader is as shocking as anything I've seen in a while.
Check out the video below, where WKYC investigative reporter Tom Meyer spoke with Greg Steffey, whose wife, Hope Steffey called 911 after she was assaulted by her cousin. Things took a turn for the worst when the police arrived and treated Hope as the perpetrator. She was arrested, taken to jail, and subjected to a humiliating full-body strip search by both male and female officers, violating the sheriff department's own policy that a strip search be conducted by an officer of the same sex. Hope was then left naked in a cell for six hours. Included in the news segment was video footage of the strip search
As you can see, Steffey is held down by both male and female officers and forcibly stripped, then left naked and alone, in a holding cell for six hours.
This incident happened and was reported in 2006,* and in a subsequent trial Steffey was found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. But at the time of her trial, the video of the strip search, which the Stark County Sheriff's office is saying was not actually a strip search, was not available. In the report, you can clearly see that an officer is holding a video camera and is taping, yet, oddly enough, no other tapes exist, or at least they were not made available to defense attorneys. In another extraordinary coincidence, the arresting officer apparently forgot to turn on his dashboard cam until Steffey was placed in the back seat of the squad car. Her husband reports that, though she was the one who was being assaulted by a cousin, the responding officers pushed her to the floor and restrained her, thinking she was the offender.
Now the Sheriff's office is suing the local TV station for defamation and (ironically enough) invasion of privacy.
According to reports, five other women have accused Stark County sheriff's deputies of similar charges. The Sheriff's office claims those other women had threatened to commit suicide though the women deny making those statements.
This is good, solid work by WKYC and Tom Meyer.
* The arrest, assault, and strip search happened in 2006, yet there are new developments as reported in the Cleveland Leader. In my opinion, though the initial event happened in 2006, this is an important issue to keep current on. We cannot sweep this under the rug because it is difficult to watch. Could be that Hope Steffey incited the sheriff's deputies to treat her with excessive force and conduct an illegal strip search. Could also turn out that there is an innocent explanation for the loss of police videotapes of the events that day. The alternative outcome deserves constant vigilant attention, IMO.