Man claims video shows Fort Myers police did public body cavity search

A video circulating on the Internet claims to show the Fort Myers Police Department conducting a cavity search on a man on a city street. Acting Chief Dennis Eads denies the man was “sodomized” and said the drugs were in a pocket sewn into the groin area of his underwear when the police retrieved them. The officer's declaration in the video that the drugs were taken "from his hiney," was incorrect, Eads said.

Michael McDonald, 30, of Fort Myers was stopped by the police for running a stop sign on December 16. According to the police report, a policeman identified as Officer Birch, approached the car and "could smell a strong odor of marijuana coming from inside the vehicle." Birch asked McDonald to step out and he put him in handcuffs.

Several other officers arrived on the scene including Officer Sean Havenner who began to frisk McDonald as several witnesses gathered. Two in the crowd had cameras and began recording.

"A lot of people came out and were watching," said Jordan Condry who was visiting family in the area. He estimated there were about 10 people, including “an older lady” who had come from around the block after hearing McDonald scream.

Condry said an officer (identified in the report as Officer Schulte) took out a knife and cut McDonald’s pants. “He was violated,” Condry said. And all the while the police were telling him to “stop resisting.”

“I feel ashamed and degraded,” McDonald said. “I’ve never been in a situation where all I could do is scream. I never thought something like this could happen to me.” McDonald said he was bent over the hood of the car face down as three officers held him. One cut his underwear and went under his pants feeling his scrotum and rectum. He said the officer put a finger in his rectum. “I couldn’t see it but I could feel it,” he said.

Prior to the search, when McDonald said he saw an officer put on latex gloves. “I said, ‘we don’t have to do this.’ And I pulled out the marijuana.” According to the police report, McDonald pulled a bag of marijuana from the front of his pants but the officer said he could still feel something.

One officer told the others, “We should do this at the station.” But they ignored him, McDonald said.

Eads said the officers could have done the search at the police station but they knew there were more drugs and they feared the evidence could have been destroyed or McDonald could have swallowed the drugs. That, he said, “could have easily killed him.”

There was no cavity search, Eads said. Such searches would have been done in a jail or by a physician. “Saying he was being sodomized, that was just not true.”

“I would love to hear a rational explanation as to why an officer would perform such a private search in public, in full view of everyone,” said Fort Myers attorney Peter Dennis. “That’s an example of the worst kind of policing in America.”

He also said the attitude of the police was discouraging and is the type of behavior that hurts community relations. In the video, the attitude of the officers “seems celebratory,” Dennis said. “That sends a message. You think you can then come to the public and say you want more cooperation? We all have to work together?”

“It’s totally inappropriate to humiliate him in public,” said Sandra Pavelka, founding Director of the Institute for Youth and Justice Studies and an associate professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Pavelka said police should, of course, be concerned about criminal activity. But incidents like this “revictimize a community that has been victimized again and again,” she said. “You have to look at it from a public safety perspective but also a broader perspective. How are we actually responding to the incidents and the perceptions within the community?”

Eads said McDonald hadn’t filed a complaint. McDonald, who has a criminal record in Lee County, was charged with possession with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver cocaine and heroin, marijuana possession, and resisting an officer with violence.

Howard Simon, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, found several aspects of this incident “troubling.” Not only does it do little to foster good community relations, McDonald may get off.

“This is very likely to follow a predictable pattern,” Simon said. “I doubt that this arrest will stick. I would not be surprised if the state attorney doesn’t kick the charge or if a judge doesn't throw it out based on a motion by the criminal defense attorney as being a body cavity search without a warrant. And then this defendant files a civil case against the Fort Myers Police Department (which) will settle three years later. It’s a pattern we see over and over when the police disregard the Constitutional rights of the defendant.”