A bus driver from Carroll County who was arrested two years ago while dropping off Sykesville Middle School students at the Maryland Science Center has filed a class action lawsuit against the city, claiming she was wrongfully strip-searched.
The search violated Wenda K. Bollinger's civil rights and was conducted against the Police Department's own policy limiting strip searches, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
The Mount Airy resident, now 38, was handcuffed in front of the Science Center in May 1992 by two plainclothes officers who charged her with failing to display her driver's license and registration and disobeying a police order made to prevent public disturbance.
She was acquitted of those charges three months later but found guilty of disobeying a police officer in a city park. She was fined $25.
Mrs. Bollinger, who still drives for her family's bus company, is asking for $2.4 million in compensatory damages for false arrest, false imprisonment and "physical and emotional suffering" from the search and from being handcuffed.
She says she refused to move her bus on Key Highway when Officer Vernell Murdock started banging on the door and windows because Officer Murdock did not display a badge, according to the suit.
"She was afraid for herself and her passengers," the suit states.
She cooperated when a second plainclothes officer arrived and displayed a badge, but Mrs. Bollinger was arrested and put into a police van "in full view of" students, parents, teachers and onlookers, according to the suit.
After Mrs. Bollinger reached Central District, an officer identified in the suit only as Jane Doe performed the search, requiring Mrs. Bollinger remove some of her clothing and underclothing.
The suit names city officials, Officer Murdock and the unidentified officer as defendants.
Police officers conducted similar searches "indiscriminately" under a "de facto policy" that violated the department's written guidelines limiting strip searches, the suit states.
But a laissez faire attitude by police commanders toward searches "encouraged individual officers to believe that they could violate the constitutional rights" of individuals who had been arrested, the suit claims.
"I think that there's probably been other people that have been through the same experience that I have," Mrs. Bollinger said last night.
One of her lawyers said he would be looking for more plaintiffs. "We're hoping to locate them once the suit gets filed and we get into discovery of city records," William F. Gately said.
A police spokeswoman, Officer Sabrina Tapp-Harper, said Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier "will not comment on any pending lawsuit until the case is over."
An internal investigation last year found that Officer Murdock violated police rules of conduct in arresting Mrs. Bollinger.
Not long after the arrest, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke visited Sykesville Middle School to apologize to students for the arrest, and he sent a letter to Sykesville's mayor apologizing for the officers' "lack of sensitivity and professionalism."
Mrs. Bollinger's lawsuit states that two months after her arrest, her lawyers turned down an offer from State's Attorney Stuart O. Simms to place the charges against her on an inactive docket if she would not sue.