Woman claims officer sprayed mace on genitals
A New Mexico woman claims she suffered for weeks after a Bernalillo County corrections officer strip-searched her and sprayed mace in her vagina.
“It’s tantamount to torture,” Peter Simonson, the Executive Director of ACLU of New Mexico said in an interview with 4 On Your Side.
The ACLU, on behalf of Marlene Tapia, filed a federal lawsuit this week two years after the alleged ordeal occurred -- two years after Tapia first contacted the organization.
Simonson said civil rights cases are complicated to build, but that his staff filed the case within the two-year statute of limitations.
According to court records, police arrested Tapia for a probation violation tied to a previous drug case. While at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Tapia said two officers strip searched her and asked her to bend over at the waist. That’s when they noticed a plastic baggie protruding from Tapia’s vagina.
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