Opinion ID: 153012
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Strip Search: Sergeant Bumpas

Text: Mr. Stearns alleges that Sergeant Bumpas unlawfully strip searched him at the Cowley County jail. The district court rejected Sergeant Bumpas's claim of qualified immunity. On appeal, Sergeant Bumpas contends that the uncontroverted facts establish that [he] . . . had sufficient information for a reasonable suspicion as a matter of law. We have articulated two primary concerns in determining whether a strip search is reasonable for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment: whether a detainee is to be placed in the general prison population and whether there is reasonable suspicion that the detainee has concealed weapons, drugs, or contraband. Archuleta, 523 F.3d at 1284. Reasonable suspicion for a search is a minimum level of objective justification based on the totality of the circumstances, taking into account an officer's reasonable inferences based on training, experience, and common sense. Id. (quotations omitted). An officer must, however, be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant th[e] intrusion. United States v. Davis, 94 F.3d 1465, 1468 (10th Cir.1996) (quotations omitted). Here, law enforcement never planned to place Mr. Stearns in the general population. At the time of Mr. Stearns's arrest, Officer Clarkson informed Mr. Stearns's grandmother that Mr. Stearns would be taken to the jail, booked, and then released on bond. Indeed, other than the time he spent in the booking room, Mr. Stearns remained in a holding cell the entire time he was at the jail and was never placed in the prison's general population. Thus, Sergeant Bumpas is not entitled to qualified immunity unless the facts taken in the light most favorable to Mr. Stearns establish reasonable suspicion to conduct the search. They do not. Sergeant Bumpas maintains that at the time of the search, he had been told that Mr. Stearns was going around following officers, and going to their homes, making threats. He concedes, however, that he was not aware of any specific threat and cites no specific and articulable facts suggesting that Mr. Stearns might be concealing weapons, drugs, or contraband. Instead, Sergeant Bumpas appears to have based the search upon an unparticularized suspicion of every arrestee brought to the jail. See Aplt.App. Vol. V at 1685 (Deposition of Steve Bumpas) (I didn't have any reason to believe he didn't [have weapons]. I mean, that's just common practice, you know. You don't knowif you come in the jail, I don't know whether you have anything or not until you've been searched, you know?). This is not a sufficient justification for a strip search. See Chapman v. Nichols, 989 F.2d 393, 398 (10th Cir. 1993) (concluding as a matter of law that a sheriff's belief that a strip search policy applied to minor offense detainees without particularized reasonable suspicion was lawful if conducted in private was objectively unreasonable). Accordingly, the district court properly denied Sergeant Bumpas's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity.