Ah, in my Civil Liberties and Rights class we had this case during our Moot Supreme Court exercise last week. My court, after some heated and illuminating discussion, ended up voting to unanimously overturn the law.
Probable cause? What's that?
There would, obviously, be probable cause when the person is arrested. Frankly, it would be a safety issue as well. The person might have something that he/she could use to cause personal injury.
These strip searches actually occur before a magistrate even determines whether their arrest had probable cause. And in this specific case, there certainly wasn't probable cause of anything: Mr. Florence was arrested only because a computer error had failed to purge an invalid arrest warrant from years before.
When that happens in Germany, police are supposed to call the court in question to verify before proceeding. This has happened to a friend of mine twice (over the same retracted warrant). The first time it happened, I was with him.
Whether they actually do that right away might depend on the circumstances of the arrest / id check / whatever it was and how credible you sound in telling them, obviously.
