A 21-year-old woman said that sheriff’s deputies in Harris County, Texas, threw her to the ground and searched her vagina earlier this year in the parking lot of a Texaco gas station because they said they smelled marijuana in her car.
Charnesia Corley of Spring, Texas, said she was driving to the store on June 21 to buy something for her sick mother when she was stopped by a deputy, according to television station KTRK.
The deputy pulled her over for allegedly running a stop sign around 10:30 p.m., she told the television station.
Here’s what she and her attorney, Sam Cammack, told the Houston Chronicle happened next:
A male deputy pulled her over for allegedly running a stop sign. He said he smelled marijuana, handcuffed Corley, put her in his vehicle and searched her car for almost an hour. He didn’t find any pot, according to her attorney.
Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her.
Then, according to Cammack, Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.
KTRK reported that she was charged with resisting arrest and possession of marijuana, although the television station did not say where the marijuana was allegedly found.
“I feel like they sexually assaulted me! I really do. I feel disgusted, downgraded, humiliated,” Corley told the television station.
She told KTRK she plans to file a complaint with the sheriff’s department.
Watch the video, from KTRK, below:
They should be summarily fired and charged with the highest degree of sexual assault…all of them. Period. End of story. This is precisely the kind of rape of peoples’ dignity that white cops have used throughout this country’s history to belittle, scare and “pacify” communities of minorities.
The message is clear: “You are not safe. The people who are here to protect you are here to subjugate you and you therefore have nowhere to turn. You will either learn your place or leave, but if you stay, you better fucking be meek and obey and accept your second-class citizen status or you will be punished. ‘Discipline’ can and will happen at any time, any place and for any or no reason.”
In that manner, this was not just a horrifying crime against this woman’s body and mind, it was a deliberate message being sent to her entire community. As far as they were concerned, she was nothing but a convenient billboard.
A “complaint”? Hope she has some sort of legal recourse to this, but I’m not optimistic.
Edited for clarity.
If they found weed it was the weed they planted when they didn’t find any on her.
These cops should be fired and blacklisted. Unfortunately, there’s no blacklist for bad cops.
How many violations of the Constitution here?
Recently I’ve seen a harmless looking, stoned out of his gourd white dude that took a selfie with his arresting officer. It’s kind of funny.
I don’t want the white stoner to be violated or the cop that arrested him to be shamed for not being an asshole. I want the this also very harmless looking woman to be treated fairly. Even IF she broke the law.
Texas, of course.