In disturbing new dashcam footage, a South Carolina police officer can be seen deciding to search a man’s rectum because the officer couldn’t find contraband anywhere else.
The incident began when Lakeya Hicks was pulled over, allegedly because she was driving with paper tags. Paper tags are not illegal, and Hicks had them because she had only recently purchased the car, but the police still insisted on pulling her over and then, upon seeing the passenger, Elijah Pontoon, ordering Pontoon out of the car and in handcuffs, because he had a record.
“Because of your history, I’ve got a dog coming in here. Gonna walk a dog around the car,” Officer Chris Medlin can be heard telling Pontoon in the video, adding, “You gonna pay for this one, boy.”
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Medlin, when he finds no contraband with the dog, then decides to search Pontoon’s person, even searching his rectum. After the search, Medlin can be heard on the radio saying, “We search the car. There ain’t nothing in the car… And on a search of him, up in his crotch by the butt, I felt something hard. I lifted his pants and pulled the back of his underwear down and I didn’t see anything but I didn’t get all the way up in there to get no vertical up shot. I just pulled his underwear back, but I didn’t see nothing. But it felt, he said it was a hemorrhoid. It ain’t no… it was a rock. It was a rock of crack. It’s gotta be a rock. He’s got it up in his butt.”
“But there ain’t no way to justify. He said, ‘I got nothing here. That’s a long time ago. I ain’t doing nothing.’ He said it’s a hemorrhoid. I got nothing else to go on. Nothing. Yeah we’re gonna have to cut him loose here.”
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