blink-182, "All the Small Things" (1999)

Say it ain't so

I will not go

As a member of the American Bar Association, I get weekly e-mails from the ABA Journal.  

I usually just ignore them.  But last week's e-mail had links to a number of intriguing stories.

Here's the headline of one of those stories:

Traffic stop brings 3 enemas, 2 X-rays and 1 colonoscopy in cops' fruitless drug search, suit says

The whole thing started when David Eckert got pulled over by police when he ran a stop sign in the parking lot at a Walmart in Deming, New Mexico.

The police officer who stopped Eckert patted him down and began to question him.  Other officers brought in a drug-sniffing dog to go over Eckert's car, and then seized the vehicle when the dog indicated there were drugs in it.  (Police subsequently found no drugs in the car.)

The police were suspicious because Eckert appeared to be clenching his buttocks tightly after he stepped out of his car.  So one of the officers got a search warrant that authorized an anal cavity search, and took Eckert to the emergency room at the local hospital.

The Eckert search warrant

The ER physician on duty refused to perform the anal cavity search.  But that didn't stop Deming's finest, who transported Eckert to a hospital in Silver City, New Mexico – which is a mere 52 miles away from the Deming hospital.

The medical staff of the Silver City hospital was more cooperative than the doctor at the Deming ER.  They first did an X-ray – which was negative – then performed a digital rectal exam, and felt "something soft."  (Ewwwww!)

The Silver City hospital went on to do a second digital rectal exam (negative), three enemas (searching for narcotics in Eckert's bowel movements each time but finding none), a second X-ray (negative), and a colonoscopy (negative).

To add insult to injury, the hospital billed Eckert for the procedures.

Eckert's lawyer said there was no probable cause for the search warrant, that the search warrant wasn't valid in the county in which the second hospital was located, and that it had expired before the colonoscopy was performed.  

He filed suit against the city, the county, the second hospital, and several individual law-enforcement officers and doctors.  (One of the doctors who was being sued had a very cool name: Okay H. Odocha.)

My favorite line from Eckert's complaint is when it alleged that, after each of the enemas, Eckert was forced to have a "bowl movement" in the presence of both a nurse and one of the policemen.  (Since "bowl movement" appeared three times in the complaint, I don't think we're talking about a typo, boys and girls.)  

Click here if you'd like to read the complaint.  It not only makes entertaining reading, but could come in handy if the police ever have you anally searched, enema'd, and colonoscoped.  (No need to waste money on a lawyer – just change the names and dates and use Eckert's complaint.)

Eckert was awarded $1.6 million.  I'd gladly put up with all the stuff he put up with for $1.6 million – wouldn't you?

"All the Small Things" was the second single from blink-182's 1999 album, Enema of the State.  It was a big hit for the San Diego-area pop punk band, peaking at #2 – that's right, I said #2 – on the UK singles chart.

Here's "All the Small Things":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: