The Police Have Boner Comparing Software?

Virginia is clearly not for lovers if they’re still teens. The Washington Post reports that the Manassas, Virginia police are trying to get a 17-year-old boy to get his penis erect on camera so that they compare it that in a video sent to a 15-year-old girl. The girls mother found it and now her daughter’s boyfriend is facing child porn charges. If he is convicted, he would be imprisoned until he is 21 and be a registered sex offender.

The police have already taken pictures of the young man’s penis, feel they need the boner shot to truly make their case. They might be using this as a tactic to get the teen to plead guilty, since the teen’s lawyer was told that if he did plead guilty,

police would obtain another search warrant “for pictures of his erect penis,” for comparison to the evidence from the teen’s cell phone. Foster [his attorney] asked how that would be accomplished and was told that “we just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need.”

I’m aware that there are erection-inducing drugs. I even read an article about their use in porn. In both of these cases, there’s probably a violation of medical ethics. At least in the porn one, it’s consensual misuse of a drug. But can a doctor ethically inject Caverject into the penis of an unwilling teen, just because the police want to see him raging hard? His genital area must be reasonably void of distinguishing marks, I guess.

The judge has actually approved the search warrant. If they do this, according to Foster,

Detective Abbot told her that after obtaining photos of the teen’s erect penis he would “use special software to compare pictures of this penis to this penis.”

So, as I asked in the title, do the police have special boner comparison software? If there is, that’s going to be something you won’t find in the App Store. It would clearly violate Apple guidelines.

On a more serious note, it really does sound like this young man's civil liberties are being violated.

Update: This may not matter, but the age of consent in Virginia is 18, so both participants are minors as regards sex.