Woman to get $100K settlement in strip-search lawsuit against city of Las Vegas

The city of Las Vegas is settling a lawsuit with a woman whose constitutional rights were violated when she was strip-searched at the city’s detention center.

A federal judge in 2015 ruled corrections officers at the Las Vegas Detention Center violated Shimeka Graham’s constitutional rights when she was strip-searched after her July 2012 arrest.

The Las Vegas City Council approved a $100,000 settlement with Graham on Wednesday, without discussion.

Senior U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson ruled that the jail’s policy at the time of Graham’s incarceration, which had been to strip-search all inmates assigned to isolation cells, was unconstitutional.

Officers put Graham in an isolation cell because of her position as a corrections officer at Clark County Detention Center at the time of her arrest on a domestic battery charge following a dispute with her then-16-year-old son. Graham was released 13 hours after being booked at the detention center, and the battery charge was later dropped.

Graham argued in her civil case, filed in 2013, that the strip-search was unreasonable. The city asserted that strip-searches are performed for the protection of both staff and inmates.

Dawson’s 2015 ruling asserted that officers needed reasonable suspicion to strip-search Graham.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Find @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.