The Constitutional Court has issued a sentence granting protection to a woman who denounced having been subjected to an unnecessary body search with full nudity in police facilities, and has considered that the judicial investigation of these events was insufficient.
For this reason, the Constitutional Court annuls the filing of the complaint filed by the claimant for amparo, and orders that the events, which occurred in 2019 in Badajoz, be investigated. The court requires that “an effective and exhaustive investigation” be carried out to clarify whether the police action was disproportionate and violated the moral integrity of the complainant, who had been arrested by court order as the author of a crime of disobedience.
The ruling – for which Judge Cándido Conde-Pumpido was the rapporteur – explains that the detainee’s complaint was admitted for processing, but not enough was investigated about what happened. The investigating judge asked the head of the Family and Women’s police unit to identify the agent who had carried out the body search and report on the need for her. The police report sent to the court indicated that at no time had the detainee been ordered to fully undress.
The magistrate questioned the complainant, who during her statement handed over to the court several audios that she had recorded “surreptitiously since she was arrested until she entered the police cell.” In parallel, the judge was informed that the cameras of the police offices had not collected images of the search carried out, and the complaint was archived.
This decision was appealed before the court itself and then before the Provincial Court of Badajoz, with a request that “the female police officer who carried out the body search be heard in person and contradictorily.” The purpose of this procedure was for the agent to explain the instructions she gave the detainee in the sense that she “should take everything off” for the search.
The petitions of the complainant were ignored, as both the court and the Provincial Court considered that the practice of the aforementioned registry had not been accredited. On the other hand, the judicial bodies archived the matter “because the search is an ordinary police action provided for in the police detention protocols established by the Secretary of State for Security.”
By reordering that the case be reopened for a thorough investigation, the Constitutional Court reasons that “the investigation carried out into the police conduct considered by the appellant to be excessive and infringing on her dignity was not sufficient, as it did not facilitate the adequate clarification of the facts denounced. ”. The court relies to support this thesis that the contribution to the court of the audios recorded by the plaintiff constitutes “a reasonable suspicion based on objective data”.
Therefore, the Constitutional Court considers that “it was relevant to try to clarify whether or not a body search with full nudity was carried out and, if so, to determine for what purpose and to what extent it was a measure proportionate to the concurrent circumstances.” The court also underlines that this type of body search, as has been resolved in previous cases related to the penitentiary sphere, “by its very content or by the means used, can lead to suffering of special intensity or cause humiliation or debasement of the passive subject and constitute, therefore, a humiliating and degrading treatment, prohibited by article 15 of the Constitution”. The resolution also highlights that there is a “consolidated and reiterated” constitutional jurisprudence and of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on “the obligation of effective and efficient investigation of complaints of ill-treatment carried out by agents of the authority during situations of deprivation of Liberty”.
#Constitutional #Court #orders #investigation #complaint #detainee #forced #undress #police #station