Toms River man who had his anus searched during traffic stop wants $900,000: Lawsuit

Jim Walsh | The Courier-Post

Show Caption Hide Caption Raw Video: Police Search Man's Anus, Genitals for Weed WARNING: Extremely graphic content and language. COURTESY: John Paff/NJ Open Government Notes. Raw bodycam footage of NJ State Police searching a man's anus and genitals for weed after a traffic stop.

MOUNT HOLLY - A motorist’s lawsuit claims he was twice abused by the New Jersey State Police – first when a trooper searched inside his pants on a Burlington County roadside, and again when a video of the incident was released to the public.

Jack Levine, a Toms River man who alleges the search was a sexual assault, wants damages of at least $900,000 for the March 2017 incident.

His civil rights suit, which names the state police and two troopers as defendants, was filed Thursday in state Superior Court in Mount Holly.

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It alleges Levine, then 21, was the victim of assault and battery after Trooper Joseph Drew stopped him for alleged tailgating on a Southampton highway.

The suit also says Levine suffered “pain, public humiliation and embarrassment” when the trooper used his gloved hand for an extended search of the handcuffed driver’s buttocks and genitalia.

“This was conducted on the roadside in front of passing traffic,” the lawsuit says. “Mr. Levine repeatedly screamed out for help, shouting ‘He’s raping me.”

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Levine suffered more distress when the state police improperly released the video to an activist who had submitted an Open Public Records Act request, the lawsuit alleges.

The viral video drew millions of viewers on the internet and was shown on “countless television stations as far away as New Zealand,” says the suit.

It contends Drew and a second trooper on the scene, Andrew Whitmore, violated Levine’s constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

Drew’s actions, allegedly spurred by the “mere suspicion” that Levine had concealed marijuana, also “were contrary to the Attorney General’s directives on body cavity and strip searches,” the suit says.

The Attorney General’s Office had no immediate comment on the suit, a spokesman said.

According to the suit, Drew initially handcuffed Levine and a passenger, then searched the vehicle after claiming he smelled marijuana.

The search “found no evidence of any controlled substance,” according to the suit.

It alleges Drew then said to Levine, “If you think this is the worst I’m going to do, you have another thing coming.”

The suit say the officer retrieved blue latex gloves from his police vehicle, “opened Mr. Levine’s pants from the back and put his hands down his pants and went from his tailbone, down the crack of his buttocks to the front near his genitalia, then put his hand in his front and groped his genitalia and moved his private parts around.”

It says Drew resumed his search, moving his hand from the front of Levine’s pants to the the back and “conducting a body cavity search.”

In the video, Levine seems almost irreverent near the start of the search.

“Man, you are really off the wall,” he tells Drew, adding later, “You might as well ask me out on a f---ing date.”

But the motorist’s mood appears to change as the nearly four-minute search becomes more intrusive.

“What the f---!” exclaims Levine, shouting with discomfort.

“He grabbed my d---!”

“Stop moving, stop moving,” the trooper says sharply at one point, using his hands to position Levine.

Drew released Levine after ticketing him for tailgating, the lawsuit says. The ticket was dismissed at Drew’s request during a September 2017 hearing in Southampton Municipal Court, it says.

According to the suit, Levine and his attorney, Arthur Lang of Lakewood, viewed part of the traffic-stop video in January of this year, when they met with two state police detectives conducting an Internal Affairs investigation.

“The video showed that Officer Drew made the statement, ‘I already got permission’ from headquarters, indicating other officers were involved,” the suit asserts.

It says the video – described as “confidential and subject to an internal review investigation" – was released to John Paff, a public-records activist in Somerset County, on April 2.

The suit contends that violated an executive order barring the release of investigative files without an order from the governor or “a competent jurisdiction.”

It says Levine previously had refused to approve the video’s release to Levine “when asked by a member of the New Jersey State Police Office of Professional Standards.”

Jim Walsh: @jimwalsh_cp; 856-486-2646; jwalsh@gannettnj.com

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