What is the current state of the law on strip searches of police officers?

Therefore, while officers "are not relegated to a watered-down version of constitutional rights," Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493, 500, 87 S.Ct. 616, 620, 17 L.Ed.2d 562 (1967), the fact that they are policemen may affect the meaning of "reasonableness" when their rights are being considered.

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Thus, in Biehunik v. Felicetta, 441 F.2d 228 (2nd Cir.1971), cert. denied, 403 U.S. 932, 91 S.Ct. 2256, 29 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971), the court was faced with a situation where sixty-two officers were ordered to stand in a lineup so that citizens could come to see if they could identify any of the officers as their attackers. The court assumed that the order amounted to a seizure of the officers within the meaning of the fourth amendment and that there was no probable cause to arrest them. Nevertheless, it found that the seizure was reasonable in light of the special public interest in the integrity of its police force. The court went on to declare that policemen "do not abandon their constitutional rights upon induction into the department" and that they would not "be required to tolerate invasions of their freedoms which are not reasonably related to the special considerations arising from their relationship of employment." Biehunik v. Felicetta, 441 F.2d at 231.

In Kirkpatrick v. City of Los Angeles, 803 F.2d 485 (9th Cir.1986), we adopted the same approach when police officers were subjected to a strip search. However, we added that "in spite of the government's interest in police integrity, strip searches of police officers for investigative purposes must be supported by a reasonable suspicion that evidence will be uncovered." Id. at 488. We made it clear that the highly intrusive nature of the strip search demanded that there be at least reasonable suspicion before the search could be conducted, even though it was conducted at the police station and during on-duty time.