Four Hazel Park police officers are being sued for accusations that they made two women expose their breasts and shake them during an early morning traffic stop.
At least one officer allegedly recorded the incident on a cell phone -- but when asked for all video evidence, authorities so far have said that none exists.
“The conduct of [the officers] was ... extreme and outrageous,” reads the federal lawsuit, which attorney Robert Giroux filed on Friday.
A spokesperson for Hazel Park Police could not be reached for comment Monday night.
The traffic stop took place around 2 a.m. on June 5, when Michelle Jaeger was driving north on I-75 past Eight Mile in a Chevrolet Tahoe, according to the lawsuit. Also in the car passengers Jan Crawford and Christopher Mattice.
Hazel Park Police officer Ryan McCabe allegedly pulled the car over, purportedly for changing lanes across a solid white line without a turn signal. At some point in the search the officer allegedly asked Mattice to step out of the car -- and during a pat-down search the officer found what appeared to be a “small baggie” of cocaine in Mattice's right sock, the lawsuit says.
The officer told the two women to get out of the car, the lawsuit alleges. While searching Crawford, McCabe “directed her to lean over the hood of the vehicle, pull up her shirt and bra ... and to shake her breasts. He then directed her to shake her breasts again, harder,” the lawsuit claims.
The officer did not find her to be carrying anything illegal. McCabe and the others then asked the other woman, Michelle Jaeger, to expose and shake her breasts as well, though the lawsuit claims that the officers allowed her to “turn away from the highway when he directed her to expose and shake her breasts, but she was still in full view of the highway and the persons on the scene.”
The scene allegedly took place as McCabe and three other officers watched -- and at least one recorded the incident with a cell phone camera. The incident would have been visible to passing traffic on I-75 North, the suit says.
When the women filed requests for video evidence through the Freedom of Information Act, prosecutors told them that none of the police vehicles had their dash cameras working, nor did the officers have body camera footage.
The lawsuit concludes that the strip searches were “clearly unreasonable.”