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."
In pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts, customs officials who initiated and participated in a bogus customs search could be found personally liable for civil damages. Imagine such a system today?
The old saying used to be 'authority demands accountability.' These days authority demands immunity...and usually gets it.
Those people are no more conservative than the throngs of addle-minded fools who cheered Hitler during his speach after the night of the long knives. Thuggery is fun when you think the thugs are on your side.
I'm guessing that is a sarcastic remark, I'm hoping in any case.
One mistake compounded by another.
Government money comes with strings. As time goes on, the private schools will become dependent on the government money and the feds will add more strings. No, this is a bad idea that people are not thinking through.
And they get to see their country for the police state it is becoming. The person who made the decision to draw guns should be fired and never allowed to make such decisions in the future.
Not becoming...IS!
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