In the wake of a lawsuit alleging officers forcibly removed a Muslim woman’s hijab before booking her into jail, the Long Beach Police Department has changed its policy to let detainees wear headscarves and other religious items while in custody unless there’s a safety concern.
Until last month, Long Beach police barred prisoners from keeping any type of religious head covering with them behind bars. Department procedures listed “hats, veils, tunics, etc.,” along with items to be confiscated like cigarettes, shoelaces and belts.
But last month, Long Beach police Chief Robert Luna issued an order immediately overruling that policy, according to the department.
“If an arrestee is wearing a religious head covering, employees shall make all reasonable efforts to allow this practice, except where safety and security concerns dictate otherwise,” Long Beach police spokeswoman Marlene Arrona said in an email.
In practice, this means inmates will generally be allowed to keep the item unless jailers are worried the person will use it to harm him or herself, according to Long Beach’s jail administrator Tom Behrens.
“Quite honestly unless there’s a situation ... where this person is distraught, potentially suicidal, I can’t imagine taking a headscarf away,” Behrens said.
Luna’s Nov. 8 order isn’t comprehensive. For instance, it doesn’t address whether inmates will be allowed to wear head coverings in booking photos, which is a pivotal component of the lawsuit that spurred the policy change.
But Behrens said that the booking photo issue hasn’t come up in the year or so he’s run Long Beach’s jail. The department is still deciding what to do in those cases, he said.
Police officials are working on finalizing a new written policy in line with Luna’s order, Arrona said.
The Lawsuit
Luna issued the order more than six months after a Muslim woman sued the city and Luna, alleging officers violated her civil rights and humiliated her by stripping her of her headscarf.
The lawsuit alleges that two officers who arrested Long Beach resident Kirsty Powell forcibly removed her hijab even though she explained she wore it as part of her religious beliefs.
On May 5, 2015, officers pulled over Powell, 33, and her husband near Market Street and Long Beach Boulevard.
Powell’s lawsuit alleges officers said they stopped the couple because they were in a low-rider. Police later said the car’s hydraulic suspension was unsafe, leading to the traffic stop.
After pulling the couple over, the officers discovered there were three misdemeanor warrants out for Powell’s arrest, one each for vehicle theft, petty theft, and resisting arrest, police said shortly after the incident.
But the warrants for vehicle theft and resisting arrest actually had nothing to do with Powell, according to Yalda Satar, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing Powell in her lawsuit.
Authorities issued the warrants after Powell’s sister gave Powell’s name as her own during a run-in with police, Satar said.
Satar said the petty theft warrant was related to a shoplifting incident in 2002 when police questioned Powell but did not cite her. The lawsuit says Powell was unaware that authorities issued the warrant.
Nevertheless, Powell spent the night in jail, according to her lawsuit.
During the booking process, while Powell was still handcuffed, one of the officers “forcefully stripped her of her hijab,” the lawsuit states.
Police returned Powell’s headscarf the next day when her husband posted bond and she was released around 1:30 in the afternoon, but in the meantime, Powell alleges she was left uncovered in front of male officers and groups of male inmates who walked by her. Police also refused to let her take her booking photo with the headscarf on, according to the lawsuit.
“The existence of the photo continues to haunt Mrs. Powell,” the lawsuit states.
The document says Powell felt “exposed, humiliated and violated” by Long Beach police’s actions.
“She cried throughout the ordeal and experienced humiliation when both her religious beliefs and personal integrity were violated,” the lawsuit says. “She felt that the male officers and male inmates had seen parts of her body that they should not have seen, according to her religious beliefs.”
The lawsuit asks a judge to bar Long Beach police from ever releasing Powell’s booking photo. It also seeks unspecified damages and an order forcing Long Beach to revise its jail policy to allow inmates to wear religious head coverings.
After Powell’s lawsuit was filed, the Long Beach Police Department released a statement saying in part that it would reach out to local religious leaders in an effort to be culturally sensitive. The statement also promised the department would talk about the issue with other law enforcement agencies “to ensure that our policies and practices remain consistent with industry standards.”
In an interview this month, Satar said she hadn’t been told about Luna’s order adjusting the policy.
Satar called the change a step in the right direction, but said the policy still has to be implemented properly by jail staff.
“I want to make sure the officers are aware and they’re properly trained as well,” she said.
Satar said she expects the lawsuit to move toward a settlement.
Other Policies
Unlike in some facilities that have begun stocking jail-approved headgarments to issue religious detainees alongside their inmate jumpsuits, trips to the Long Beach jail are usually brief, Behrens said.
Prisoners usually remain there only a day or two and, “When you come into the Long Beach jail, you keep the clothing that you’re wearing,” Behrens explained.
Religious headwear will now generally fall into that category, too.
By contrast, police in the Michigan cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights began providing Muslim women with tear-resistant hoods to wear while in custody after a pair of lawsuits were filed against the municipalities last year.
Long Beach jailers could still confiscate headgarments if they see a risk, according to Behrens. A long headscarf, he said for example, could conceivably be twisted up tightly and used to strangle someone.
But he said the department has a range of options available before taking that step.
An inmate trying to harm others could be held alone in a cell or even transferred to county jail more quickly than usual, according to Behrens.
Safety is a primary concern, but, “The main piece of this policy is we want to keep the dignity of this person,” he said.
According to Satar, it’s not uncommon for police departments to lack guidelines addressing hijabs or other head coverings.
“In my experience, looking at policies throughout (the) Southern California area, almost all the policies were the result of some lawsuit,” she said in an email. “On the other hand, most departments do not find themselves faced with this problem because the instances of arrest related to an individual with a religious head covering is uncommon.”
The nation’s largest jail system, run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, doesn’t have a specific policy governing hijabs or headscarves, according to department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida. The only religious headwear addressed specifically in the department’s manual is the brimless kufi cap, which the department allows male Muslim inmates to wear, she said in an email.
In practice, however, female inmates are allowed to keep their headscarves after the booking process, Nishida said.
During the process, the female inmate is first searched by a female deputy and then two booking photos are taken, one with the headscarf on and one with it off, according to the department.
But Nishida said, the hijab could soon be officially recognized by the department.
“The Sheriff’s Religious and Volunteer Services (RVS) is currently working on identifying all allowable religious items within custody. There will be more information forth coming from RVS identifying each religious item that will be allowed for each religion,” Nishida said. “The hijab is one of those items.”
A larger societal shift could be what drives law enforcement to adopt procedures that are more sensitive to inmates’ religions, said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that studies policing issues.
“What I think is happening is as our western kind of Christianity-centric society is becoming more informed about the religious apparel and accouterments of other religions, you’re starting to see accommodations be made and comfort levels rising.”
Policing institutions can be slow to accept cultural change, he said.
Bueermann used tattoos as an example. When he began his career, any visible ink was outright banned, but 33 years later, when he retired as Redlands police chief in 2011, hardly anyone batted an eye at officers with tattoos.
“There’s some lag time between how society gets comfortable with certain things and how policing in the United States gets comfortable with some things,” Bueermann said.