A Syracuse man was subjected to a forced rectal exam because cops believed he had drugs hidden in his rectum and to add insult to injury, he was later billed for the unnecessary butt probe, The Post-Standard reported Tuesday.
Torrence Jackson, 42 was traumatized by the ordeal after cops ordered doctors at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center to check the man’s rectum. After he was knocked unconscious, Jackson endured a forced sigmoidoscopy, because he reportedly would not cooperate with police and it turned up nothing, the outlet reported.
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Jackson said he protested to being brought to the hospital and went “screaming and yelling” but to no avail.
“They just gonna do what to me,” he said of the Oct. 16, 2017 incident in a video interview with the Post Standard.
Jackson was reportedly restrained to a bed and sedated.
According to reports, a nurse told the outlet that Jackson was “agitated and combative.” And his medical file noted that he was “threatening to kill staff members in the parking lot.”
Some 12 hours later, Jackson woke up and was taken to a justice center. That’s when he noticed blood in his underwear, he said.
“I go to the bathroom, I got blood in my draws,” he said.
“I told them from the beginning I didn’t have no drugs in me,” Jackson said.
Then after the forced probe he was shocked to learn that he was billed from St. Joe’s for $4,595.12. Jackson refuses to pay it and says the hospital has threatened to send it to a collection agency.
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“I can’t believe that they found a judge who would sign off on it and then found a hospital to do it,” Jackson’s attorney, Charles Keller, told the Daily News. “At what point are you over the line of what’s decent?”
St. Joseph’s released a statement in defense for their actions.
“St. Joseph’s Health complies with court orders to screen, and in certain instances remove, foreign bodies from detainees who come to our hospital in police custody and are suspected of concealing contraband internally,” the statement read. “The actions taken by hospital employees were consistent with the directives of the court.”
Things started when Jackson reportedly was stopped in a “pretext stop,” which allows police to investigate someone that find suspicious, the paper reported.
Officer Anthony Fiorini allegedly saw Jackson heist his bottom off a seat and protrude his head out of the window which made him suspicious that he was placing drugs up his rectum. But an x-ray showed there were no drugs.
Jackson attorney said all charges against him were dropped except for a traffic violation.
