DEMING, NM – Police officers in Deming are facing a federal lawsuit after they forced a man into horrific surgical procedures against his will to check him for narcotics which they never found. The public is demanding answers about why a man was forced into enemas, x-rays and colonoscopies and was then billed to pay for the forced medical procedures.
David Eckert was stopped by police after he didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign. Officers asked him to step out of the vehicle and they noticed that he seemed to be “clenching his buttocks”. Law enforcement believed this to be probable cause that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity. While he was being detained, the officers obtained a search warrant from a judge in Deming county for an anal cavity search.
Deming Police attempted to take Eckert to an emergency room in Deming, but a doctor refused to perform the search claiming they believed it was “unethical.” Police decided to take him to a hospital in Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City, the next county over where the physicians agreed to perform the procedures.
Eckert was then subjected to brutal medical procedures against his will. The doctors x-rayed him and saw nothing. Then they stuck their fingers in his anus twice, finding nothing again. After that they inserted an enema and forced him to defecate in front of the doctors and police. The doctors searched his stool and found nothing.
Undeterred, they gave him another enema and then a third, with nothing in the stool. Then they decided it was time for more drastic measures. Doctors x-rayed him again just to be sure and then sedated him to prepare for surgery. Doctors performed a colonoscopy, inserting a camera scope all the way up through his anus, rectum, colon and large intestines.
They never had consent from Eckert for any of the procedures.
“If the officers in Hidalgo County and the City of Deming are seeking warrants for anal cavity searches based on how they’re standing and the warrant allows doctors at the Gila Hospital of Horrors to go in and do enemas and colonoscopies without consent, then anyone can be seized and that’s why the public needs to know about this,” Eckert’s lawyer said.
Eckert’s lawyer is arguing that the search warrant was overly broad and lacked probable cause. Also the search warrant was only valid in Luna County, but the Gila Regional Medical Center is in Grant County. That means that the procedures were performed illegally and had no basis without consent from the patient. The warrant also expired at 10PM, but the procedures weren’t carried out until the following day at 1AM.
The hospital has billed Eckert and threatened to send him to collections if he doesn’t pay for the procedures.
“This is like something out of a science fiction film, anal probing by government officials and public employees,” Eckert’s lawyer said.
