I used to be a police officer in Scotland, and that's pretty much exactly what we do here. The "rifling through belongings" is to stop people taking drugs or w

I used to be a police officer in Scotland, and that's pretty much exactly what we do here. The "rifling through belongings" is to stop people taking drugs or weapons, even improvised ones, into cells. This is especially important for the nice people who have suddenly been arrested for the first time - because it's when the cell door closes that they are at their most vulnerable and people can either self harm, attempt suicide, or take whatever drugs they happened to have on them. All of which the specific officers booking him in have a legal duty of care to prevent happening. You always leave your shoes outside the cell, you lose your belt, the drawstrings from clothes etc. It's procedures honed out of years of "best practice" being identified from things going very wrong. Officers are often given very little discretion, because it saves them from themselves letting something go wrong. Children and vulnerable adults (i.e. people with learning difficulties) get treated slightly better, but then they are also held to be less responsible for their actions. If you think what happened to him was demeaning you really need to see what happens when someone with a history of drug addiction, self harm and assaulting the police comes into custody, it's a world away from what happened here.