Posted on 11/18/2003 4:37:41 PM PST by freedom44
A commando-style police drug raid on a high school in South Carolina was "a new low" in America's War on Drugs, Georgia Libertarians have charged.
"Police entered a school and intentionally terrorized over 100 innocent children, all in the name of a War on Drugs we all know to be an abysmal failure," said Georgia LP State Chair Helmut Forren.
"[The War on Drugs has] trampled the rights of law-abiding citizens, and now jeopardizes our most precious resource, the lives of our children. America hit a new low in the War on Drugs."
On November 5, about a dozen police officers and drug-sniffing dogs burst into Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina. With guns drawn, they wrestled students to the floor and restrained 14 students with plastic handcuffs. No drugs were found and no arrests were made.
The incident was filmed on school security cameras and broadcast on news shows around the world, sparking harsh criticism of police tactics.
But such raids are an inevitable byproduct of the War on Drugs, said Georgia LP Legislative Director James Bell.
"This can and will continue to happen in our schools as long as our nation continues to treat drug use as a police matter rather than a health issue," he said.
Goose Creek police defended their actions, saying they had not "intentionally" pointed guns at school children.
However, such excuses won't heal the trauma students felt when being confronted by a swarm of armed officers, said Georgia LP Vice Chair Garrett Michael Hayes.
"Once again, the drug war brings violence into our schools," he said. "This time, though, it's the police, waving guns in the faces of children. If we worry that children are becoming desensitized, we don't need to blame video games; the real-life authorities are doing enough on their own.
"When are they going to realize that their medicine is worse than the disease -- a disease that should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one?"
Goose Creek, which has a population of 30,000, is about 15 miles north of Charleston, South Carolina.
No, that's just his/her way of dealing with debates that he/she has no way of winning and is in the vast minority of FReepers. Check out CJ's posts on illegal immigration. You'll find tons of "good people of state x" comments on those.
My bottom line is that to do that, the notion of "sovereign immunity" be scaled back, which would go a long way toward checking impulses to overzealousness and carelessness.
In other words, if department commanders and line cops knew they'd get their financial futures destroyed by aggressive carelessness, they wouldn't go in to a high school with guns drawn.
Oh no, it's much more restrictive than that. You should not comment on anything that occurs on a given STREET in a given WARD in a given COUNTY unless you own property on that street.
If you speak up willy-nilly, the terrorists have already won.
OH, that makes it okay then. I'm just disappointed they didn't start kicking any kid they could find with steel-toed boots.
As a recovering addict, let me tell you, brother Palpatine, that I wasn't thinking in terms of criminality when I was involved in drugs. It wasn't about "What can I steal?" or "How can I harm people?" or "Let me mess society up like *this*!". It was only about scoring dope.
Looking back on it all, it really IS a medical problem. "Cracking down" on dope users is really really stupid. They need medical treatment. Maybe we force them into it, fine -- but thats what they need.
I can go with using the system to force treatment the first couple of times with no sanction save for noncompliance, but after that, I gotta go with the criminal prosecution and conviction.
What is the word for comments such as "Marijuana makes white women have sex with colored jazz musicians"?
I believe it was their standard procedure in a drug bust to have weapons ready (drawn and at their side, not pointed).
C'mon! Get serious! Shoot 'em all!
Let God sort them out! D*mn hippy punks!
Now where in H*ll are the doughnuts?
A search must be reasonable at its inception, i.e., there must be ''reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.'' (469 U.S. at 342). School searches must also be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying the interference, and ''not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.'' (469 U.S. at 342). In applying these rules, the Court upheld as reasonable the search of a student's purse to determine whether the student, accused of violating a school rule by smoking in the lavatory, possessed cigarettes. The search for cigarettes uncovered evidence of drug activity held admissible in a prosecution under the juvenile laws.
There is some serious double-think in that statement. I don't know what is worse, drug crazed libertines, or gun crazed praetorian guardians of temperence, sobriety, and compliance. "What ya got in your pocket boy?" "Ritalin?" Oh, that's OK as long as the state prescribes cocaine analogs in loco parentis. Some drugs are also more equal than others in our "drug-free" schools. The real lesson is compliance. Paging Mr. Orwell, your flight of fancy has arrived...
Based on that account, the search was restricted to the main hallway, and limited to "only book bags that the police dog responded to, not students".
In a school of 2760 students, only 107 were involved. Seems to meet all of the criteria in my post.
The real objection seems to be the drawn guns, not the search.
Now, given that a student may have a weapon. Given that drug dealing is going on. Given Columbine. You're in charge -- how do you go about it?
You go waltzing in with two or three narcotics officers in suits asking kids to please open their book bags? Shots ring out. Maybe some dead cops, some dead kids. You're out of a job and may (should) go to jail. Imagine the thread on FR for that scenario.
No, you go in hard and fast, dogs, guns, overwhelming force. Take control of the situation. Then wipe the egg off your face when you don't find any drugs. But nobody got hurt, except a few bruised teen egos and some pi$$ed off Freepers that the cops couldn't please no matter what they did.
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