A teen’s mother is suing the Beaumont Police Department claiming that a male officer’s videotaped strip search of the girl — with her mother present — was unreasonable and violated the girl’s federal civil rights.

The lawsuit also says that Beaumont has “written strip search policies that permit male officers to record naked women (including minor girls).”

The Beaumont Police Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The action filed Sept. 28 names Beaumont officers and the city as defendants. There was no response to a phone call and email seeking comment from John Pinkney, a contract city attorney for Beaumont.

“I have never seen anything like this,” Jamon R. Hicks, an attorney for the mother, said in a telephone interview. “That search should never have happened, at all.”

The complaint, filed late last month, is one of two current federal court lawsuits that address strip-search practices by Inland police agencies.

A lawsuit filed in May challenges the strip-search and visual body cavity search policies at San Bernardino County jails.

It claims strip searches of men and women detained for nonviolent, nonweapon and nondrug offenses continue at the facilities — even though strip searching that type of inmate was found unconstitutional as part of a $25.5 million settlement of a 2005 lawsuit.

San Bernardino County has moved to dismiss the lawsuit against it, with a hearing set for Nov. 26. It contends that the amended complaint fails on procedure, and that its plaintiffs do not match the two classes identified in the 2005 lawsuit’s partial summary judgment.

“Never arrested”

In the Beaumont lawsuit, the girl’s mother was in the interview room as a male officer told the girl to remove her clothes and turn slowly as she was video-recorded as part of an investigation into a fight.

“The actions described here are unfortunately part of a long-standing custom, habit, and practice of members of the Beaumont Police Department regarding cross sex strip searches of female citizens,” the lawsuit said of the Dec. 23, 2017 search.

Hicks said in a telephone interview the girl was 16 or 17 when the search took place. She reflexively covered her chest and was allowed to keep her underwear on, he said.

This publication is not naming the teen or her mother because the girl was underage when she was searched.

The mother was told “this had to be done to clear her daughter of any wrongdoing, so she would not be arrested, which is improper,” Hicks said. The mother, he said, didn’t “know how this works.”

The video recording took place, the lawsuit said, before any arrest and without a written “reasonable suspicion that the searches would produce contraband or weapons.”

The girl “was never arrested, as far as we know. After this happened, she never heard anything else back about the investigation,” Hicks said.

The lawsuit says the girl’s constitutional rights against unreasonable search and due process and privacy were violated, and that both the girl and her mother “suffered physical, mental, and emotional distress, invasion of privacy, the loss of enjoyment of life, and a violation of due process of law.”

The lawsuit seeks punitive and monetary damages to be determined at trial, along with at least minimum damages stemming from alleged violations of California laws on strip-searches and coerced surrender of constitutional rights, set at $1,000 per violation for the former and $4,000 per instance for the latter

San Bernardino County lawsuit

The lawsuit against San Bernardino County, filed on behalf of two men and a woman identified as “Jane Doe,” also names the Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff John McMahon and four jail captains in the department as defendants, claiming they “turned a blind eye” to the search procedures.

It claims San Bernardino County jails maintain “a blanket policy” of strip searches for all men and women in custody for nonviolent, nonweapon and nondrug related cases, regardless of the reason they are being detained.

Such searches have “no legitimate purpose … it serves only to humiliate and dehumanize these individuals,” the lawsuit says.

A person unable to make bail for a traffic misdemeanor will be subjected to the same invasive search as someone arrested for serious offenses, the lawsuit said.

It also said “examiners often fail to change gloves between procedures,” and that detainees don’t get an explanation of what is being done. “Indeed, asking questions can be considered recalcitrance which can result in the use of physical force on the detainees,” the suit claims.

“Individuals have sued previously over these practices, but the relatively-small liability threatened by these individual suits has not been sufficient to cause the policymakers to implement reforms,” the lawsuit said.

San Bernardino County attorneys say the three former inmates failed to exhaust of other remedies for their complaints, including seeking claims against the county before filing the May 25 lawsuit.

A claim was filed, two days before the lawsuit, by one plaintiff for himself and his class and was sufficient, the plaintiff attorneys claimed. “Not so,” the county responded.

The county also said the former inmates failed to offer evidence showing conflicts with guards resulted in them being afraid to file a grievance, nor evidence that supervision by McMahon and the other defendants could be linked to the actions they allege.

The partial summary judgment in the 2005 case, the county argued in its motion, addressed two classes — arrested people who have returned from a court appearance and are about to be released, and inmates who have not been arraigned, are charged with nonviolent, nondrug crimes, and are being transferred from short-term to long-term jails.

But the latest complaint does not identify either specific category, meaning the former inmates’ claim that defendants were aware they were affected by the previous court ruling “does not appear accurate,” the motion to dismiss says.

The former inmates are seeking damages, including punitive damages, to be determined at trial, and at least the minimum state awards for alleged violations of California laws on strip-searches and coerced surrender of constitutional rights, as sought in the Beaumont lawsuit.