Why Were They Stripped Searched?

White Officer Now Faces Jail Time reports say.

Reason Reports: Baton Rouge prosecutors are hoping to put a college professor in jail for sharing bodycam footage, cop strip searching a Black teen in broad daylight.

UPDATE: A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, family has settled with the city for $35,000 after officers conducted a pretextual traffic stop, strip-searched a minor in public, and conducted a warrantless home entry that resulted in a man spending five months behind bars.

The officers’ actions were so egregious that they attracted the ire of a federal judge and Cops Strip black Teens in broad daylight.

After all, the modest sum awarded to Green’s family will ultimately be paid by the taxpayers, the criminal charges against Green were only dropped after he spent five months behind bars, and the cop at the center of the scandal already had multiple complaints against him prior to that day.

Behind the wheel was a woman named Kayleen Butler. Camallo ordered her and her passengers—23-year-old Clarence Green, his 16-year-old brother (whose name is withheld in court documents because he is a minor), another unnamed passenger, and a young female child—to exit the vehicle.

According to the police report, Camillo claimed he “smelled marijuana,” so the officers placed Clarence and his brother in handcuffs. The officers then pulled down their underwear while they stood on the public street, exposing their genitals, and searched for drugs.

According To Reports

According to the initial incident report, the officers found a firearm in Green’s “underwear.” Because he was then on probation for possession of Oxycodone, Green was prohibited from possessing a gun. The report also stated that the cops found marijuana on Green’s younger brother.

It wasn’t until after they finished the search that they allowed the mother, Tanya Green, to see her children. At that time, the officers sought to convince Clarence’s 16-year-old brother to consent to a DNA swab.

“Call a lawyer,” said Clarence, his statement captured in the body camera footage, while he sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” responded Officer Troy Lawrence Jr., “I’m gonna come in and I’m gonna fuck you up…You think I’m playing with you? I will fuck you up.”

Green was ultimately indicted for unlawful possession of a firearm. He would sit in jail for several months—until the government abruptly sought to drop the charges with little explanation.

The federal judge overseeing the case granted the state’s request. Then, in an unorthodox move, he issued a scathing rebuke to the prosecution, noting that the cops involved may very well be guilty of criminal wrongdoing.

“The Supreme Court has said that officers may conduct a ‘frisk’—meaning a brief pat-down of the outer garments—if the offer has a reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed,” Frampton says.

Testimony

In his opinion, Judge Jackson also noted that Sergeant Camallo “gave multiple conflicting accounts when describing the circumstances leading up to [Green’s] traffic stop, and failed to offer a satisfactory explanation for why the police reports in this investigation were revised nearly one dozen times” after Green was arrested.

A review of a November 2020 hearing transcript, where Camallo testified, shows that his story indeed evolved. Though he mentioned the “drug house,” Camallo centered the traffic stop around “a small child who was in the front passenger seat” sitting in someone’s lap, a traffic infraction that he said he enforced regularly.

The justification for the officers’ entry into the Greens’ home is also under dispute. An updated police report stated that Tanya Green provided “written consent” to search Clarence’s bedroom, where the police found two additional firearms, though the body camera footage does not corroborate any such consent, and Tanya denies providing it. Camallo was not pressed on that inconsistency while under oath.