Posted on 12/10/2003 9:30:41 AM PST by NormsRevenge
CHARLESTON — The Goose Creek Police Department appears not to have followed its own rules on using drug dogs in its guns-drawn raid at Stratford High School last month.
A videotape the Police Department released shows a police dog passing close by students who had been forced to kneel on the floor during the Nov. 5 raid. It also captures an officer lecturing students as that part of the raid ends.
“If you’re an innocent bystander to what has transpired here today, you can thank those people that are bringing dope into this school. Every time we think there’s dope in this school, we’re going to be coming up here to deal with it, and this is one of the ways we can deal with it,” the unidentified officer says.
More than 100 students were in the hallway that morning as a police dog passed close by, barking and excitedly sniffing their backpacks. At one point, the dog grabs a backpack with its mouth and shakes it. At another time, the dog jumps briefly on its hind legs onto his handler as they check students huddling in an alcove.
The department’s procedure on “illegal narcotics detection” states, “Only after the on-scene supervisor has cleared the area of all personnel will the canine enter and conduct an illegal narcotics detection.”
The tape shows Goose Creek police officer Jeff Parrish and Major, a Czechoslovakian shepherd, entering the hallway.
Jim Watson, secretary of the North American Police Work Dog Association, says Goose Creek’s K-9 unit is certified. Watson won’t comment on the Stratford search, which found no drugs, but says he knows Parrish and Major.
“Jeff is nationally certified, and he has a helluva good dog. He has excellent control of the dog,” Watson said.
Major is an extremely sociable dog that “loves to search for narcotics,” Watson said.
Barking during a drug search isn’t a threat, Watson said. Dogs are taught to treat finding drugs as a game of hide and seek.
“Why is a dog barking?” Watson said. “It’s not because it wants to bite someone. He just wants to play that game.”
Some dogs are trained as passive alert dogs and will sit when drugs are found. Others are aggressive alert canines and bark or take other actions.
“The Supreme Court has ruled you can search a person with a passive alert dog,” said Cpl. Louis Reed of the Charleston Police Department. “We have a passive alert dog, but we still don’t search people because of the possibility of someone saying something happened to them or that they felt threatened.”
Other agencies, including Reed’s, wouldn’t allow police dogs to go near children during drug sweeps.
“We don’t want people to say they were threatened by the dog,” Reed said.
Students could stare, make catcalls or provoke a dog in other ways, he said. While Reed won’t comment on the specifics of the Stratford High sweep, “it’s not how my unit would have done it,” he said.
In a lawsuit filed Friday, students say they felt frightened as the dog passed by, and they say the dog was unruly and appeared to be unresponsive to commands.
Charleston’s prosecutor last week turned an investigation into the raid over to state Attorney General Henry McMaster.
Apart from a surveillance camera that triggered the national reaction to the raid, a police officer videotaped the incident. The Post and Courier of Charleston obtained a copy of that tape under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
That recording begins seconds after a team of Goose Creek officers sealed one of Stratford’s hallways. Two officers can be seen with their guns drawn
“Get on the ground! Get on the ground!” an officer yells as students fall to the floor. “Hands on your head, hands on your head, do you understand?”
A few minutes later, a voice on a loudspeaker says, “All right, bring the dogs down.”
Goose Creek principal George C. McCrackin is heard saying: “All right, the dogs are coming through. Just stay still.”
17 students file suit over school drug raid
Group seeks money for damages, injunction against another such raid
By LAUREN LEACH
Staff Writer
Seventeen Stratford High School students are suing the city of Goose Creek and the Berkeley County school district in federal court, alleging police and school officials terrorized them in a drug raid last month.
Individuals named as defendants in the suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, include: Stratford High School principal George McCrackin; Berkeley County school superintendent Chester Floyd; Goose Creek police Chief Harvey Becker; and Goose Creek police Lt. Dave Aarons.
The suit also names the city of Goose Creek, its police department and the Berkeley County School District as defendants.
School officials declined to comment on the details of the lawsuit but expressed regret about the incident.
The Nov. 5 raid by police and school officials has created a national firestorm, in part because it was caught on videotape by the school and made available to a local television reporter.
Stratford officials have said they had reason to believe drugs were being sold in the hallway before classes started, but no drugs were found in the raid.
Some Stratford students were arrested on drug-related charges earlier this year.
In the lawsuit, the 17 students asked for an unspecified amount of money for damages and an injunction against another such raid.
They also asked for a declaration that their constitutional rights had been violated.
The suit charges the students’ Fourth and 14th Amendment rights were violated. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure; the 14th forbids states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”
The suit also levels charges of assault, battery and false arrest.
McCrackin “planned, ordered, orchestrated and executed the Nov. 5 raid on the Stratford campus,” the suit said.
The school district, the police department and McCrackin bear responsibility for what happened, the suit said, in part because they failed to train and supervise their employees prior to the raid.
The suit also said McCrackin “has made clear” that the raid “will be and is the standard policy for Stratford’s administration.”
When contacted Friday, McCrackin said he had not received any information about the lawsuit. “Even if I had, I can’t comment,” he said.
Floyd said he heard about the lawsuit Friday afternoon and did not have a copy of the suit, but described the matter as “very unfortunate.”
“We’ve had local, state, national and international news coverage on this,” Floyd said. “It’s a month old. I’m trying to get everything back to normal. I’m sorry it all happened. I’m sorry it’s a lawsuit.”
In the suit, the students provide details of what happened to them on Nov. 5 when police burst into the school to conduct the raid. Maurice Harris, a 14-year-old freshman, said one officer pointed a gun at his face. “Maurice can still see the end of the barrel looking him in his face,” the suit said.
The suit comes one day after Ninth Circuit Solicitor Ralph Hoisington of Charleston turned over the case to South Carolina’s attorney general. His announcement angered parents who attended the news conference at Goose Creek City Hall.
Attorneys for the students said Hoisington’s decision played no part in the decision to file suit.
“It was already going to happen,” said Dwayne Green of Charleston, one of the students’ attorneys. “I share the concern that many members of our community have that children shouldn’t have to go through those types of tactics or procedures. I think there is a general concern that no one would want that to happen to their children.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a South Carolina native, traveled to the Lowcountry this week and announced plans for a Dec. 16 rally to protest the drug raid.
Goose Creek parents question drug raid at high school! Welcome to the New POLICE STATE!
Watch the police raid that Goose Creek High School in South Carolina (Video Link)
Rally supports Goose Creek principal who asked for high school drug sweep (SC)
Exept that it was probably more like "Gehno goo! GehnaGOOOO Puke! Hnuh oooo! Hnuuuun HUUUUUUU!!! Dnuuu OOOOOOG puke?"
I'm sure the dog is a fine animal. It's his handlers who should be sent to the pound.
Raid at High School Leads to Racial Divide, Not Drugs
TAMAR LEWIN
Published: December 9, 2003
OOSE CREEK, S.C., Dec. 8 — It was partly a tip from an informant, partly the activity he saw on the Stratford High School surveillance cameras that led the school's principal to call in the police for an early morning drug sweep here on Nov. 5.
But it was also tape from the surveillance cameras, showing the police drawing guns on students, handcuffing them, making them kneel facing the wall and finding no drugs at all that has set off protests and created a racial divide.
For many residents of Goose Creek, a pleasant bedroom community north of Charleston, it was particularly disturbing that though blacks make up less than a quarter of the 2,700 students at the high school, two-thirds of the 107 students caught up in the sweep were black.
The legal consequences of the raid are still emerging. No charges were filed against the students. Instead, the local prosecutor has asked the state attorney general and the United States attorney's office to decide whether students' rights were violated. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of the students has been filed.
The timing of the raid, which began at 6:45 a.m., apparently contributed to the racial skew: only the earliest buses, filled mostly with black students, had delivered their passengers; the later buses and students who drive had not yet arrived.
The principal invited the police to hide in utility closets and stairwells until he gave the signal that the first students had arrived. Then the police burst out, with a drug-sniffing dog.
Pam Bailey, the spokeswoman for the Berkeley County School District, which includes Stratford High, said black students were not singled out.
"This was not racial profiling," Ms. Bailey said. "When you have reports that some students are selling drugs at a certain time in a certain place, whether they're black, white or Asian, that's when and where you go."
But many students saw the raid as an example of racial bias.
"If they were willing to get anybody, they would have come at a different time and searched the whole school, not just 107 kids out of 2,700," said De'Nea Dykes, a black 11th grader.
Ms. Dykes said she thought the school's principal, George C. McCrackin, "was right to try to do something about the drug problem, but this wasn't the way."
Ms. Dykes said she was leaving the restroom when she saw officers coming toward her with guns drawn and yelling at students to get down.
"I assumed that they were trying to protect us, that it was like Columbine, that somebody got in the school that was crazy or dangerous," she said. "But then a police officer pointed a gun at me. It was really scary."
Jessica Chinners, a white 10th grader, said that when she saw which students were being searched, her first thought was that the police were racist.
"I looked down the long hall and saw the police lining up all these black students," Ms. Chinners said.
Ms. Dykes, Ms. Chinners and most other students interviewed, black and white, said the incident opened a racial chasm in the school.
While some black teachers and parents say the raid was appropriate, and some white ones say it was excessive, many of the reactions break down along race lines.
The week after the incident, the school's teachers, most of them white, held a demonstration along with some community members to express support for Mr. McCrackin.
Some black parents, meanwhile, have called for the firing of Mr. McCrackin. Last Thursday, hundreds of people, almost all black, turned out for a rally at which the Rev. Jesse Jackson denounced the incident along with the fatal shooting of a mentally ill black man in North Charleston last month.
Mr. McCrackin declined to be interviewed. But in a Nov. 11 letter to parents, he said: "I was surprised and extremely concerned when I observed the guns drawn. However, once police are on campus, they are in charge."
There has been no formal decision on whether the police acted improperly. On Friday, the local prosecutor, Ralph Hoisington, said he was asking the state attorney general to decide whether charges should be filed in connection with the raid. Mr. Hoisington said he was convinced that the police goals were appropriate but that some officers' methods had been "ill-advised at best." He said he was asking the State Law Enforcement Division to share its report on the incident with the United States attorney's office and the F.B.I. to decide whether there were any federal violations.
The students' legal claims are getting under way, as well. On Friday, Ronald L. Motley, a prominent local lawyer, filed a class-action lawsuit against Mr. McCrackin; the schools superintendent, Dr. J. Chester Floyd; the Goose Creek police chief, Harvey Becker; and others, accusing them of violating the students' constitutional protection against unlawful search and seizure, as well as assault, battery and false arrest. The American Civil Liberties Union said it would soon file a similar suit, in which the racial issues would be explicitly raised.
"It is completely illegal for police to go into a school with their guns drawn, dogs and handcuffs to find students who might have drugs," said Graham Boyd of the Drug Policy Litigation Project at the A.C.L.U. "The right way to do this, if they have reason to believe a student has drugs, is to call that student in to the principal's office and search the bag there."
For many of the students in the sweep, the raid is a humiliating memory. Rodney Goodwin, a 10th grader who came to Stratford this year, said he was in the cafeteria when the principal pointed him out, along with other students at his table, to three police officers, who told him he was under arrest and put plastic handcuffs on his wrists. Mr. Goodwin was taken to the main hallway, where, he said, a police officer pointed a gun at him as the principal patted him down and reached inside his pockets.
"I really don't know why they did what they did to me," he said. "I didn't do anything wrong, but they arrested me."
It takes a brave, brave man to point a gun at a handcuffed kid's head. Heroes of the NWO....hack* sphut
And cops complain that the public doesn't "respect" them any more. I wonder why?
Also, this is the first I read where someone claims he was arrested. He's lying about being arrested -- but certainly telling the truth about everything else, huh?
If something were found, of course it would be admissable. Why wouldn't it be?
The only charge stemming from the raid involved a ninth-grader who was cited for allegedly filing a false police report, saying an officer shoved her to the ground during the search, Aarons said. McCrackin said he, other school officials and the girl's parent reviewed video surveillance tapes and determined the girl wasn't in that hall at the time.
You really need to learn how to read "what isn't there".
I'm disappointed, RP. You seem to have forgotten our earlier exchanges. Having been a card-carrying member of the LP for 19 years, indeed I favor legalizing drugs.
Now it's your turn.
Let me guess -- you think that any tactic, including pointing loaded pistols at schoolchildren, screaming at them to get down on the floor and put their hands on their heads, running among them with a loudly barking police dog -- that all this is fine if it's for the WOsD. And it's also OK just as an exercise, even if the oinkers found zip in their "search", at least the pigs got to have some fun, right?
The WOsD has been an utter disaster in so many ways it's hard to count. Not the least of which is the utter abuse of citizen's rights by jack booted scum like this.
What I really think should be done to those folks can't be expressed due to the posting rules.
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