Strip searches cost Oakland $4.6 million

Nov 15, 2012 - 0 Comments

San Francisco Chronicle

The city of Oakland agreed Tuesday night to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who were illegally strip-searched by police in public.

The Oakland City Council voted in closed session to resolve the case, in which the men had their pants pulled down on city streets from 2002 to 2009. Ignacio De La Fuente and Jane Brunner voted against the settlement.

"It's absolutely the wrong thing to do," De La Fuente said of the payout.

The settlement is the result of protracted litigation over a series of lawsuits. It comes more than a year after a federal judge, ruling that Oakland's strip searches were unconstitutional, ordered the city to pay more than $1 million in damages and attorneys' fees in the case of two other men who were strip-searched in public. Read More

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