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Remote Strip Searching
by Maris Lemieux If you thought the movie Phone Booth was implausible, imagine your boss strip searching you according to instructions from someone at the other end of a telephone. Well it happened again -- this time in Arizona -- and it wasn't a movie.

So the police-impersonating phone caller struck again last week at a Taco Bell's in Maricopa AZ. The caller claimed that a 17 year-old girl who was a customer in the restaurant had stolen a pocketbook. Actually, he didn't claim that that particular girl had stolen the pocketbook. He gave a description of a girl. And if this incident is part of a five-year prank caller pattern that has hit Burger King, Wendy's, Applebee's, McDonald's, Hooters and others, in all parts of the country, then the caller was a guy investigators believe calls from phone booths in Northern Florida.

Let's see: Florida…Arizona. So how does he describe a girl in Arizona from Florida so closely, that the manager on the other end of the phone is dead sure she's the "suspect"? His description of the girl has to have been somewhat generic. Either that or -- OK, giving the Taco Bell manager the benefit of the doubt here -- maybe the caller was one of those professional ESP frauds who can pull context clues out of the air and (presto!) miraculous revelations. Or he's a renegade from the Cold War where he was trained by the CIA in remote viewing. After all, one of the investigators on the case speaks with awe and hero worship when he says, "this guy's good!" So, let's just say, the hypnotic voice and the exact, remotely viewed description of the girl in question is so unquestionable, and the voice on the phone so intimidating, that without having a name or checking an ID, the store's manager takes it upon himself to apprehend the girl and conduct a strip search. (This is not your boring day of slinging cheese bits!) Not only does the manager do the strip search, but, with the caller on the line instructing him every step of the way, the manager works his way to a cavity search (and the girl is somehow not running out of there as fast as her legs can carry her). Try to imagine the voice on the phone: "Yes, you better look up her twat in case she's stuffed the stolen pocketbook up there." So the question is, stupid person or victim?

If you had the chance to see the Hardee's manager from South Dakota, Allan Mathis, on Good Morning America, just after he was acquitted for doing a similar search, you can be the judge. Actually, Mathis didn't do the cavity search; he only touched up the girl's breasts and fingered her a little. OK, well three hours worth. And maybe we shouldn't leave out the naked jumping jacks. Oh, and making her sit on his lap. And this was all recorded for posterity on the company cameras. Mathis was up against charges of kidnapping and second-degree rape (does that mean the first degree rapist was a voice on the phone from Florida?). Definitely not the charges most likely to succeed. Mathis got off, with his lawyer claiming Mathis had been equally victimized (let's not say equally) as Mathis told how much he hadn't wanted to do it. Mathis pleaded that the man on the phone was "very convincing, very demanding." Wonder if Mathis also had to endure an aching hard-on? Such an ordeal. Or spend all that time in soiled underwear -- soiled under the duress of being forced to have a naked woman on his lap. Gee, maybe he should sue the nineteen year-old employee who went along with him for three hours in the back office -- after he'd thrown her clothes in her car.

So what we have is a guy on a pay phone for three hours overseeing a strip search. This is definitely not Phone Booth -- Colin Farrell couldn't get five minutes alone in his booth without half the street trying to oust him, let alone three hours. Couldn't investigators come up with some kind of lead on a guy who spends three hours in a phone booth? In the South Dakota case, the girl had access to her cell phone. But she didn't call 911, where investigators may have been able to coordinate something.

Investigators claim that the caller plays on people's fears and threatens them with jail, unemployment, and so forth if they don’t comply. And what fear possesses the searchees to go along? In the Mathis case, the woman was at first held forcibly, and later didn't want to try to leave because she was naked. She also feared for her job. But at a South Boston Wendy's, how much of a role did force play when a female supervisor strip-searched one of her male employees? It is unlikely that she pinned him down.

Only this past week, did the Restaurant Association send out an email warning its members of the strip-search phone calls. And it's probably a good thing because the law suits are piling up. The young man in the South Boston case is suing, though no criminal charges have been filed and the supervisor who stripped him has been suspended. When they catch the caller, what will they charge him with? Phone fraud? Inciting a rape? Accessory to assault? Impersonating the voice of an officer? All around it's the oddest combination of unlikelihoods. Kind of makes you wonder if all of us aren't just so bored with our lives we'd suspend all belief for a couple of hours for a few cheap thrills. Or is that only in the movies?