60 Per Cent of Toronto Arrests Led to Strip Searches

Although they're only supposed to be used when a suspect is believed to be hiding a weapon or evidence, the invasive tactic is becoming more common.

And keeping in line with the Frisky Friday theme we seem to be developing here, if you were arrested by Toronto police last year, chances are, you were strip searched. Sixty per cent of all people arrested in 2010 had to disrobe for police, nearly double the rate of strip searches carried out just 10 years ago. Police Chief Bill Blair said the massive increase in the number of strip searches is due in part to the police doing a better job of tracking what happens to each suspect, which seems like an inadvertent admission that police weren't documenting hundreds of strip searches each year until recently. Supreme Court guidelines require a reasonable suspicion that a suspect is concealing a weapon or evidence on their body for a strip search, leading former mayor John Sewell to call on police to just frisk suspects instead of making them drop their drawers.