Family To Receive $35,000 Settlement After Teen Is Publicly Strip-Searched

A family in Baton Rouge has quietly received a $35,000 settlement after their teen was strip-searched in public during a traffic stop.

Source: Sean Gardner / Getty

With the current climate in America, especially surrounding police accountability, the pressure is on cities and officials and the powers that be to hold bad officers accountable.

As time goes on, we are seeing cities try to quietly pay out settlements to avoid public backlash. One settlement that is making noise comes from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a teen was publicly strip-searched, The Advocate reports.

After a federal judge excoriated a Baton Rouge police officer for conducting a questionable traffic stop and warrantless search, the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council voted last month to pay the defendant $35,000 in taxpayer money — a public acknowledgment of bad policing.

The settlement came several months after something unusual happened in federal court: Prosecutors in Baton Rouge scrapped the indictment against Clarence Green, saying only that they had “reevaluated the evidence.” By then, Green had already spent five months in jail.

Rather than let the dropped charges fade into the background, Chief District Judge Brian Jackson issued an order lambasting the arrest and prosecution as “emblematic of precisely the type of ‘foul’ blows universally condemned by our jurisprudence.”

From the details, the video evidence was so strong it upset the officials and caused the judge to blast the officers for how they handled the situation. As for the officer, he is still working, pending an official investigation. With the heat from the city, we can expect his tenure to be in question in the future in Baton Rouge. Like always, this would not stop the officers from working elsewhere, which is another point in the argument toward police reform.