The standoff started with a drug stakeout.
Last August, police in Lorain, Ohio, arrested a man they suspected of hiding a baggie of drugs in his butt. He denied it, but police were certain, so they took him to a local hospital for a body cavity search.
The case then swerved into unusual territory: The man would not agree to the procedure, so the police got a judge to order it. The doctors refused, saying it was dangerous and unethical — and later added that it violated the hospital’s Catholic principles.
The police pushed back. The doctors didn’t budge. The dispute spiraled.
The hospital now faces criminal charges and has been forced to dismantle its in-house police force. It has sued authorities, alleging retaliation and discrimination. And the man who was held at the hospital while the two sides fought over his bowel movements says he was humiliated and violated by the experience.
The showdown, now in its seventh month, offers a glimpse into the delicate relationship between police and health care workers, professions that have historically worked together closely but whose missions can clash. That particularly happens when police use the power of the justice system to force medical workers to do something to a suspect — a body cavity search, a blood draw, removal of a bullet fragment in search of evidence — that challenges their training and ethics.
There is a growing awareness among medical workers that they do not have to say yes to police all the time, “especially when patient health and privacy are at stake,” said Ji Seon Song, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who researches policing in hospitals.
The dispute last year began as a routine police investigation in a small Rust Belt city on the shore of Lake Erie, 30 miles west of Cleveland.
On Aug. 10, acting on a tip, plainclothes Lorain officers staked out a house believed to be part of a drug-dealing operation, according to police records. A gray SUV pulled up, and the officers say they watched what looked like a drug deal.
The SUV pulled away, and the officers followed in an unmarked car. The officers pulled the SUV over for a minor traffic violation and patted down the four occupants, including Tony Harris, 31, who had a history of drug arrests and had been sitting in a back seat. An officer said he felt a foreign object near Harris’ groin that he suspected to be drugs, then arrested him for obstructing official business.
At the station, officers strip-searched Harris and said they glimpsed “a white item at the entrance of his anus,” according to a police report. The officers took Harris to Mercy Health-Lorain Hospital, where a CT scan noted something in Harris’ bowels — but did not indicate if it was a foreign object, the hospital said. Police obtained two court orders for a cavity search, but both Harris and the hospital refused.
In a recent interview, Harris told NBC News he was not hiding any drugs in his body. He said he objected to a body cavity search because “it was too uncomfortable for someone to have their fingers inside me.”
Doctors cited another reason to avoid the search: If there was a baggie of drugs inside him and it burst, he could die of an overdose. The safest alternative was to allow any object to pass naturally through a bowel movement, doctors said, according to court records.
A cavity search “would be so highly dangerous and unnecessary as to rise to the level of medical battery,” Gil Palmer, the hospital’s president, later said in a signed court affidavit.
The hospital, part of the Catholic health system Bon Secours Mercy Health, later cited its ethical and religious directives to defend human dignity, uphold the sanctity of life and refuse procedures deemed “morally wrong” as additional grounds not to perform the cavity search. It is not clear if doctors made that argument while Harris was in the hospital.
As the stalemate dragged on, Harris remained held in the 338-bed hospital, where staff said no foreign object emerged. Harris said he was handcuffed even while using the bathroom, which he said was degrading. “Nothing came out other than natural stuff,” he said.
On the night of Aug. 12, Palmer said, Lorain Police Chief James McCann called him at home and threatened to arrest him for obstruction of justice if he didn’t comply with the warrant.
McCann declined an interview but in court documents denied threatening Palmer.
The hospital declined to make Palmer available for an interview.
Soon after, police issued Harris a court summons and released him. Harris was later indicted on charges of tampering with evidence and obstructing official business and is awaiting trial. No drugs were ever found.
When he was finally allowed to leave, Harris said he could tell that the police “were very upset.”
Lorain County prosecutors sought contempt charges against Mercy Health-Lorain Hospital, alleging that the hospital “willfully, intentionally, and knowingly disobeyed” a judge’s order.
In response, hospital lawyers accused authorities of trying to bully doctors. “The motive here is to send a clear message to medical providers,” they wrote. “That is — their right to refuse to commit potentially fatal medical battery in violation of their moral, ethical, and/or religious convictions is not respected in Lorain.”
These sorts of disputes are rare, experts say — but when it comes to obtaining potential evidence from a suspect’s body, hospital workers must be careful to protect patients and avoid allegations of malpractice.
A New Mexico man won a $1.6 million settlement from city and county authorities in 2014 after he was forced to undergo multiple body cavity searches at a hospital, and the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2019 dismissed a drug conviction against a man over a hospital’s forced body cavity search. In 2017, a Utah officer arrested a nurse who defied his request to obtain a blood sample from a drunk-driving suspect without a warrant; the officer was fired and the nurse won a $500,000 settlement with local authorities and the hospital.
Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of the George Washington University Law School and a specialist in public health and civil rights law, said Lorain Hospital “raised the right questions” in refusing to comply with the warrant.
David Smith, a Seattle lawyer who has represented health care organizations for much of his career, said the Lorain authorities essentially demanded that doctors abandon core principles to do no harm and get a patient’s consent.
“If I were a wagering man, I’d put my money squarely on the side of the hospital because this doesn’t make any sense,” Smith said. “A hospital can’t be in contempt for following rules and regulations.”
The dispute in Lorain further escalated in November, when McCann sent the hospital a letter saying he was canceling a 2018 agreement that allowed the hospital to have its own police force, including nine commissioned police officers.
On Dec. 31, Mercy Health-Lorain Hospital sued McCann, the city of Lorain and Lorain County officials, accusing them in federal court of “actively attempting to imprison doctors, persecute medical providers based upon their religious beliefs and affiliations, and entirely strip religious medical institutions of police protection as retaliation.”
The hospital’s corporate parent, Mercy Health, said in a statement that it was proud of its work providing health care in the area, and that it was trying “to ensure the protection and safety of our patients.” The hospital now uses private security guards.
City and county officials in court filings denied discriminating or retaliating against the hospital. The contempt case and the hospital’s lawsuit are pending in court.
McCann said in a court filing that he canceled the policing agreement because the hospital had failed to comply with terms and there were unspecified problems with its operations.
The man at the center of the dispute, meanwhile, said he is trying to move ahead with his life.
Harris, who had several drug convictions since 2020, said the case has upended his attempts to stay out of trouble. He said he works at an auto parts warehouse and has been “on the straight and narrow.”
He added: “Even when I’m trying to do right, this happens.”
