Posted on 11/11/2003 8:09:54 AM PST by CanisRex
GOOSE GREEK--Last Wednesday started out like most any other school day for Ray Glover, a senior at Stratford High School -- until police officers with guns drawn stormed into the school's cafeteria at 6:45 a.m. and began barking orders at startled students. The perplexed Glover said he had no idea what was happening, or why.
"The police came into the cafeteria with the dogs, and then they chased one kid down the hall," said Glover, a tall 19-year-old with braided hair who is known by the nickname "Bolo."
"I know that some students who've never seen a gun in their lives were really scared," he said.
Glover said an officer hustled him out of the cafeteria and into the hallway, placed plastic handcuffs on him and made him lie on the floor while his clothes and book bag were searched.
"He was yelling, telling me to get down," he said. "The police are crazy nowadays. If stuff like this keeps happening, a lot of students won't want to come back to school."
It's been nearly a week since the Goose Greek Police Department's drug sweep sparked both widespread criticism and a state law enforcement investigation. School officials -- tentatively, at least -- still stand behind the drug sweep, which netted no drugs or arrests. Questions about why police officers felt it necessary to draw their weapons on teenagers and whether black students were unfairly targeted have only grown more insistent.
Representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union plan to come to Goose Creek this week to investigate whether the group should sue, said Anjuli Verma, with the ACLU's drug policy litigation project in Washington, D.C.
Many Stratford students are more than willing to share their stories.
When Sam and Josh Ody stepped off the bus at Stratford High the morning of the drug search, they headed to their usual spots -- Sam, a senior, to the lunchroom, and junior Josh to the end of the hall by the stairwell where his friends congregate.
Shortly after Sam sat down in the cafeteria, a coach came up and told the students at his table to put their hands on the table. When the students asked why, they were told it was the principal's orders.
Then a police officer came over and bound Sam's hands behind his back with yellow restraints, took him into the hallway and told him to face the wall as a dog smelled his bag. He watched as his binders and folders were dumped out on the floor.
Then the principal, George McCrackin, patted him down, checked his shoes and took out his wallet, asking him where he got the approximately $100 he was carrying, Sam said. The student said he told McCrackin he had just gotten paid at his job at KFC.
"The people I hang out with are not drug dealers," Sam said. "We play basketball. We have nice clothes because we have jobs."
Down the hall, Josh was standing with his friends when he heard a rustling and felt something hit him in the back. When he turned around, he said, he saw a police officer standing behind him with his gun drawn.
"He told me to get down on the ground," said Josh, who then was instructed to put his hands behind his head and stay down.
Sam and Josh said that when the search was over, police told them that any innocent bystanders in the crowd should blame the search on the people bringing drugs to school. Then the students who had been bound were released and told to go to class.
Since Wednesday, Sam and Josh's father, Nathaniel Ody, has tried to meet with McCrackin to discuss why his sons were targeted. So far, Ody said, he hasn't had any luck. It's not like the Ody family isn't known at Stratford High -- four older siblings have been through the school, and both Sam and Josh are athletes.
The brothers and other students interviewed Monday were hesitant to say that race played a factor in the search, but they noted that police searched the hallway where black students tend to hang out and that most of the students involved were black males.
"They handled it the wrong way. Most people aren't used to officers pointing guns at them," said Gerney Glover, a freshman who was sitting near the auditorium and watched police run in with guns. "I really didn't like starting my freshman year off like this."
What the raid accomplished, though not in the best way, was a wake-up call, said senior Scott Rice. "If there were drugs in any school, they're not going to be for a while now."
Chester Floyd, superintendent of Berkeley County schools, said Monday that neither McCrackin nor any district official knew police would come in with guns drawn.
"Had we known that the method of search had changed, the principal would not have requested the intervention," Floyd said. "However, once police are on campus, they are in charge."
He declined to take a position on whether police acted correctly, saying the district would wait until the State Law Enforcement Division ends its investigation.
"But we understand fully the concerns of parents. We have similar concerns. I'm sorry for any student who experienced this if it was unwarranted," he said.
Floyd said he knew of no other drug sweep in any school nationwide in which police came in with guns at the ready. "We want to be first in a lot of things," he said. "But I'm not sure we want to be first in this."
Goose Greek police Lt. Dave Aarons has said several of the 14 officers who entered the school drew their guns as a matter of officer safety because drugs often go hand-in-hand with weapons.
Stratford High is the largest school in Berkeley County and second-largest statewide, with nearly 2,700 students. Because of its size, it has more surveillance than other schools in the county -- about 70 cameras that have been installed within the past two years.
Some parents accuse officers of targeting black students. About 70 percent of the 107 students who happened to be in the hallway are black. At that time in the morning, two early buses have dropped off students from predominately black neighborhoods.
Berkeley County schools will continue to hold unannounced drug sweeps using police dogs, Floyd said, but "the more routine kind," without guns drawn. The sweeps occur periodically at the schools, at principals' request. Generally, high schools hold two or three each year, he said.
"My concern," Floyd said, "is that we get back to some normalcy."
They can't even give them after school detentions LOL hahahahahahahahahahaha. They have in school suspensions. The one teacher gives them candy and popcorn when they have in school suspensions.
Your tax dollars at work.
The times they are a changin'
Cops don't belong in schools. Teachers need to bust heads again.
You know, clean up the schools and get re-elected.
Screw that. The police are professionals. If some segment of the community asks them to go round up all the Jews in the city, does that excuse it. HELL NO. They, not their supporters, are supposed to understand the limits of the law. This means both individually, as a sworn officer, and collectively as a force.
In showing such complete lack of common sense and disregard for the highest law of the land they have, rightfully, opened themselves up to ridicule and lawsuit.
Were I the parent of a child treated in this way you can bet I would be suing everyone involved for large amounts of money, as well as working to organize a class action against the school, the police, the principle, the chief of police and the school board. My goal would be to bankrupt all them, which would definately send the message "you can't pull guns on kids at school, handcuff them, and smack them around because you think there are drug dealers at the school" or, perhaps more simply "this is not the USSR".
Now the cops do what they are trained to do and we suddenly have a problem with it.
If cops are being trained to randomly arrest and search individuals suspected of no crime our Republic is gone, we had better train our kids to fight tyranny - because it is here.
Either with the spoken word and constitutional activism, with yours truly serving as as good an example as I could make...or, if necessary and God forbid, with their firearms (side arms, shot guns and long rifles), which they are all also trained to use.
Yet another strategic victory in the War On Drugs. Don't think that just because no drugs were found that this wasn't a tactical success... because it was.
Right.
Blame this ineffectual Gestapo stupidity on the kids who bring drugs to school (where no drugs were found).
It would be funny if it weren't so tragic a portrayal of the futility of the badly failed WOD.
The Drug Czar likes to say that buying drugs is tantamount to supporting Terrorism. It isn't.
It's keeping the drugs illegal which forces the money into the hands of terrorists. It is the WOD which is directly and solely responsible for this.
Nah. He needs to have guys with guns take him down is in his own home.
That school and town's not safe. There are terrorists there.
-archy-/-
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