Lawsuit filed against local jail alleging filming of naked DUI suspects
A lawsuit filed last week alleges the City of Puyallup recorded female DUI suspects as they undressed in a bathroom. A local DUI Attorney filed the lawsuit stating the suspects were recorded using the jail surveillance system and attractive woman seemed to have been recorded more often. So how did this all come about following their DUI arrests.
Apparently several woman have stated they were asked to undress even though they were not booked into jail and were immediately released. Raising the suspicions of why they were asked to undress when they were not getting booked. Additionally one woman recalls a jail guard informing her that she did not remove her underwear as instructed when she was changing into the her jail uniform. The curious thing about this was nobody else was in the room to know of this detail.
The other issue that suggests this might be true is in the difference of how the men and women were asked to change. I guess the men were allowed to change in a separate room that was not recorded and were allowed to change behind a curtain. While the woman were asked to change in this bathroom that offered no privacy and had video capabilities.
At a news conference last Thursday a spokesman for the jail said the guards were just following standard jail procedures and the lawsuit is completely meritless. Additionally a statement was also provided by the Puyallup City Attorney who said this DUI Attorney’s allegations are not true and he has only cherry picked several videos to support his claim. He also suggests this particular DUI Attorney only filed this lawsuit for own financial gain and a review of the more than 60 videos in question do not show any illegal actions on the part of the jail.
It should be interesting to see what happens. On one hand you have these videos and victims which clearly speak for themselves. However on the other hand you have this DUI Attorney who may just be in it for a quick score as the Puyallup City Attorney suggests. I would be interested in seeing a large sample size of the procedures used by the jail guards. If there is not a pattern and only a few videos were cherry picked by the DUI Lawyer than this lawsuit might not survive.
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About the author: Matthew Leyba is a DUI lawyer in Seattle, WA. His practice focuses on representing those accused of DUI and other traffic related offenses. He is rated as a 10 out of 10 by Avvo, and was recently named a Rising Star in the field of DUI Defense by several publications than rank lawyers.