Baton Rouge police strip-search teen and enter home without warrant

Within minutes of being pulled over by police on New Year’s Day last year, Clarence Green was standing in the street behind an SUV with his pants down and his underwear exposed. The officer groped him in public in his search for drugs. 

Then police searched Green’s 16-year-old brother in the same manner. 

That officer is now under investigation. The city has settled with the family for $35,000. 

“What’s captured in the video bears a closer resemblance to sexual assault than it does to constitutional policing. The officers involved were clearly outside the bounds of anything that the Supreme Court has said is permissible for law enforcement officers to do,” Thomas Frampton, the Green family attorney, said. 

Body camera footage from after the traffic stop shows an officer entering the Green family’s home with his gun drawn and without a warrant. 

Officers did allegedly find drugs and a gun in the search and Clarance Green spent five months in jail until a judge ordered his “immediate release” after determining that officers “demonstrated a serious and wanton disregard for Defendant’s constitutional rights.” 

The judge also said in his court ruling that police reports in the investigation had been revised nearly a dozen times. 

The Baton Rouge Police Department told CBS News that it had conducted an internal investigation. But the officers remain on the job. It’s up to the police chief whether the officers face any sort of discipline. 

“I think there’s a lot of work there to be done by the chief of the Baton Rouge Police Department to determine if policies and procedures were followed. If they were not, then disciplinary action should follow,” said Ronal Serpas, a professor at Loyola University, New Orleans.