Nanny state

In the last post myself and a few others have been banging on about how western societies are for ever evolving more and more into nanny states like with CCTV in the UK. Well I think we can beat that in the city where I live.

In recent years the police have been pushing for more an more powers to search and detain people and so forth. The government has just recently given them new powers as to use sniffer dogs in the main night spots areas of the city. This is where you get the late night trouble and drunkenness and so forth. The police have long maintained that these places are a veritable cesspool of illegal drugs that they are wading in illicit drugs.

Last Saturday night for the first time the police suddenly appeared in these night spots with many sniffer dogs and spent 6 hours in these night-club areas, train stations and so forth having these dogs sniff people for drugs. Thousands of people would have been sniffed.

Guess what? No one, not even one person was found to have been in possession of illicit drugs. So much for the claim of these areas are significant drug dealing and drug taking areas. With five people the dogs indicated that the person did have drugs on them. Each one of them when further searched by the police had no drugs detected. There was 100% false positives given by the dogs.

So here we can have innocent people walking along in public, displaying no intoxication or anti social behaviour who may be with their granny or perhaps others they are wanting to do business with. A dog gives the indication they have drugs whilst every one is looking on and the police take you out the back to give you are search. What’s your granny going to think or people you are trying to do some business with? People can easily think that the dog got it right and he/she had drugs on him but the police did not find it. When that may not be the case at all.

This is frightening to me that the government has given the police such powers. Also what types of searches have the government given the police the right to do. Interestingly you never see this reported in the press for some reason. Working in a prison I have seen many searches done of various types. When a dog gives a positive response I assume the police then do a “Pat down” search of the person.

I had many of these done to me when working in a prison. Often there would be random pat down searches of staff. This is where no clothes are removed and the searcher simply pats the outside of the clothing to feel if there is anything secreted on the body under the clothes. They pat all over the body and they go right up to the top of the inner thighs, and I can tell you that is getting pretty close and personal!!! I never had a guard actually feel my genitals directly to see if anything was being smuggled there but their hands get very close!!

Then there are the various cavity searches like the ears, nose and the mouth. I have seen prison officers find all sorts of contraband in such ‘cavities’ as prisoners attempt to move various drugs and so forth around the prison. I recall being shown a very small home made syringe that a prisoner had secreted up his nose for many months.

I hope the police in these night spot raids don’t have such powers of searching. For instance with the mouth search the searcher has to get up very close to the face and shines a torch in the mouth and then either gets the person to use their fingers or the searcher uses his fingers to pull the inside of the cheek away from the teeth and lift up the tongue. That was never done to me but it looks invasive to say the least.

Then of course there is the anal cavity and one would hope to god they could not do such searches!!! However even forgetting that part of the anatomy I have seen all sorts of devices made by prisoners that can hold contraband in between the butt cheeks for extended periods of time. In searches of this kind the prisoner was ordered to remove all his clothing, stand with his legs apart and go into the squat position. The officer then shone a torch to see if the was anything concealed.

Working in a male prison one only has to worry about the female anatomy when they are visiting their incarcerated boyfriends which includes face to face contact. In “visits” at the prison there was an extensive video surveillance system and sometimes I would see it when wanting to watch a certain prisoner. The vagina of course is a means of smuggling contraband and again I have seen all sorts of things that have been found using this part of the anatomy for transportation. I was told that a small home made pistol was once attempted to be transported in this way but I never saw the gun for myself.

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