Florida Woman Says Cops Yanked Her Tampon Out at Gunpoint During a Traffic Stop

A woman named Leila Tarantino is suing the Citrus County sheriff’s department for allegedly strip-searching her on the side of the road while her two children watched. Because she “maybe” rolled through a stop sign.

UM, ‘KAY, FLORIDA.

A passing cop pulled a u-turn, flashed the lights, and rolled up behind her. Tarantino claims that the cop immediately drew his weapon, pulled her from the car, and refused to explain why he pulled her over. Tarantino’s two young children watched all of this unfold from inside her car.

The cop then placed Tarantino in the back of the squad car, where she allegedly sat for two hours. When backup arrived, Tarantino was strip searched on the side of the road, where passing motorists could see everything.

Then, in a gruesome twist, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Presumably, the cops were looking for drugs, but the lawsuit notes that a drug-sniffing dog was never called in, and cops never found any contraband or anything illegal.

The officers eventually released Tarantino with a citation.

Okay. Now. Obviously I have no idea WTF happened here, but I’m confident that I do not like it and I do not want to subscribe to its newsletter. Obviously there are some details missing. What is the cops’ (there were SIX of them) supposed motive? Was it racial profiling? Did this lady just give off a there’s-drugs-in-my-vag vibe? Are the kids smoking tampons these days?

Seems to me that forcibly extracting a tampon from an unfamiliar vagina on the side of a steaming Florida highway is a punishment more than a frolic—not exactly something one does for shits and giggles with the bros—but what do I know? It also seems that if one truly suspected a motorist of hiding contraband inside her vestibule, one could investigate it in the privacy of the police station rather than in front of the motorist’s traumatized children. But, again, I’m not a police scientist. This one’s all yours, justice. I’m out.