Should Police Have the Right to Force Children to Masturbate in Front of Them So They Can Take Photos?

Should police have the right to force children to masturbate in front of them so they can take photos?

What if it's part of a legal investigation?

Yes, this actually happened, and a judge endorsed it.

Whether the police have the right to force your teenage son to masturbate in front of them in order to incriminate himself is a legal question few parents would think they’d have to consider.

And yet Trey Sims’ legal guardians had to do exactly that. In an effort to prosecute the 17-year-old for sexting his 15-year-old girlfriend, Manassas police detective David Abbott obtained a search warrant authorizing him to take “photographs of [Sims’] genitals,” including “a photograph of the suspect’s erect penis.” According to court documents, in the process of executing the search warrant, Abbott took the teenager to a juvenile detention center, took him to a locker room and, with two uniformed, armed officers looking on, ordered Sims to pull down his pants.

After taking pictures with his cell phone of the teenager’s genitals, Abbot then ordered the minor to masturbate so that he could take a picture of his erection. Sims tried but failed to comply with the officer’s orders; Abbott later threatened Sims’ lawyer that, if police couldn’t get a picture of the teenager’s erection by forcing the kid to masturbate, he would obtain a photo of the teenager’s engorged genitals by subjecting him to “an erection-producing injection” at a hospital.

The facts of this case are outrageous, but sadly, they’re not the product of any single bad actor or law. On the contrary, they reflect a criminal justice system that’s structurally broken at almost every level. Sims’ case shows that we have a system in which the legislative branch is permitted to criminalize whatever it wants, with effectively no judicial oversight; police investigations are invasive, unchecked, and can cause far greater harm than the underlying [alleged] criminal act; and it is nearly impossible to hold police liable for unlawful misconduct. Until we address those systemic problems, we should expect more tragic cases like this one.  (CATO Institute, November 15, 2018) *
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* According to the 2017 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (University of Pennsylvania), The Cato Institute is number 15 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 10 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States".

Operating in Hostile and Non-Permissive Environments:
A Survival and Resource Guide for Those Who Go in Harm’s Way

 

Military personnel deployed to a combat area, their supporting contractors overseas, government civilian employees overseas, non-government organizations (NGOs), journalists working on international stories, businesses attempting to establish a foothold in developing countries, and individual travelers to remote areas of the world can all find themselves in hostile and non-permissive environments. This guide covers a broad range of subjects that are intended to aid individuals, living and working in dangerous areas, in being safer in their daily lives and in being better able to protect themselves and survive in case of an emergency, disaster, or hostile action.