OAKLAND — Police were recently called to an Oakland hospital after a man, complaining of pain, allegedly refused to leave the premises and began threatening staff with a knife, court records show.
When officers arrested the 42-year-old suspect last month and scanned his body for contraband as part of the jail intake process, they received a possible clue as to why he may have been so irate. There, in his anal cavity, was a glass, bulbous methamphetamine pipe, which he allegedly refused to secrete and hand over.
By the day’s end, police would retrieve the pipe from the man, who now faces charges of threatening a nurse with a knife and attempting to smuggle contraband into Santa Rita Jail. But the retrieval process wasn’t easy; it required authorities to obtain a judge’s signature to specifically search the man’s “anal cavity,” as well as calling in a medical specialist, according to court records.
The suspect has been in jail ever since, on a no-bail hold alleging that he violated his parole for a prior attempted murder conviction during the Dec. 18 ordeal. His attempted murder conviction came in 2011, and stemmed from an incident the prior year when he allegedly screamed a death threat at a relative, then stabbed her twice in the neck, records show.
The man would still be in prison, except that last year a judge lowered his sentence by three years, finding that in light of a new state law designed to reduce incarceration, he was serving prison time for a now “legally invalid enhancement,” court records show.
He violated his parole in June, when he allegedly punched one person in the back of the head, causing the victim to strike their head on a sidewalk, and slapped another person. Both people told authorities the attack appeared unprovoked, and the man served a jail term for the assault, court record show.
Authorities say that before forcibly removing the pipe from the man’s body, they attempted to reason with him, explaining that if it cracked he could be injured, and that it would be in everyone’s interest if he got it out on his own. He refused multiple chances to do so, according to police.
