Posted on 07/03/2004 3:15:07 PM PDT by Stew Padasso
McMaster: S.C. school drug raid was legal
CHARLESTON, S.C. - No criminal charges will be filed against Goose Creek police officers who drew guns during a "grossly inappropriate" search for drugs at Stratford High School, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said Thursday.
"There is no evidence of any degree of criminal intent on behalf of the police officers or school personnel; thus a criminal prosecution would not be appropriate," McMaster said.
The Nov. 5 raid drew national attention after a videotape aired nationwide showed students being ordered to the floor and a drug dog prowling the hall. No drugs were found and no arrests were made in the sweep, which has spawned two civil lawsuits.
McMaster began investigating the sweep after a local prosecutor asked the Attorney General's office to intervene.
The state's chief prosecutor said school officials had "probable cause" to conduct a search for drugs but criticized police officers' decision to draw weapons during the search. McMaster said taking guns from holsters was a highly dangerous tactic that could have been deadly.
"Such raid tactics are well suited for a crack house but not a school house," he said.
Oh please....an excellent principle would have found the drug dealers, especially since they seem to know at what time and under what cameras they did their dealing.
And no I would not ever support this kind of action for drugs.
The fact that they didn't find any drugs tells me they were fishing. I wouldn't appreciate having a gun aimed at me while police decide to look for drugs at the mall...would you? Hell no, yet you expect our children to be subjected to this in schools they are compelled to be present in 10 months a year.
Not my children....not in America.
Pointing a gun at someone is, by definition, a "use of force."
Don't believe me? Try it.
Okay, now parents have a decision to make. Do they want to send their kid to a school such as this one, or will they look to homeschooling or other options for their children?
Just because it's okay to do this doesn't mean that students and parents are going to put up with it.
Yes, as proven by the suspected student drug users and dealers who were taken out behind the gym and shot, then bulldozed into a mass grave...oh, wait...NEVER MIND! < /sarcasm >
The point being that overstating your case does not help, even if your basic premise is right.
Nope, me neither. Then again, you and I would have showed our hands.
You decide to reach into your jacket pocket after being told to place your hands on your head, you can expect to have a gun pointed your way whether you "appreciate" that or not.
"The fact that they didn't find any drugs tells me they were fishing."
What? I thought you said you were familiar with the incident. First you say, "Go after the law breakers, if there even were any which I doubt since no drugs were FOUND!", then you're saying they were on a "fishing" expedition?
You can make a case about the guns and dogs. Not that I would agree, but I can at least understand it. But to say the authorities had no cause to conduct the search, well, you're either ignoring the facts or you're in denial.
I agree. Obviously, the author has a different definition.
You can make a case about the guns and dogs. Not that I would agree, but I can at least understand it. But to say the authorities had no cause to conduct the search, well, you're either ignoring the facts or you're in denial.
? One of us ain't getting the pic. In a previous article the principle called the police saying he saw boys dealing in the bathrooms...his excuse for the raid imo.
The police stormed the hallways guns drawn on teenagers! They came in looking (fishing) for illegal activity of which they found NONE.
There was no dope dealing..no dope was found. Now what facts am I ignoring? there was no dope found hense no reason for the search if you want to call it that.
When I say go after the lawbreakers, I mean that the principle should have gone to the boys he claimed he saw dealing. Why traumatize and put into danger other students.
He claims that they stand under the cameras and deal.... then catch them while they are under the cameras...do something different, in our school you come in and go to the auditorium until time to go to class. There is no wandering the halls freely. The principle was incompetent.
Other than the facts I posted in #18?
"But two arrests for drug distribution have been made at the school three months into the year. That's half as many were made during the entire 2002-2003 school year."
-- Spartanburg Herald Journal; November 13, 2003
"Senior Monique Gonzalez says she saw students during the raid running from campus, dumping drugs along the way."
"There were kids throwing pills and things in the bushes. People were taking bags out and throwing them on the ground," said Gonzalez, who was standing less than 200 yards from the school during the raid at a shopping center where students hang out."
-- Spartanburg Herald Journal; November 13, 2003
"Anytime that there is drug activity going on, the police officers believe that there's a reasonable expectation that there may be a threat of violence."
-- city spokeswoman Casey Fletcher
TEACHER: "Today, class, we're going to learn about the Fourth Amendment..."
STUDENTS: "snicker, laugh, snicker, snicker..."
A few years from now, at this school...
MILITARY RECRUITER: "Son, we need you to sign up to defend freedom and the Constitution..."
STUDENT: "Snicker. Laugh. Snicker. Snicker..."
The damage here is incalculable.
Really..... so criminal activity was happening outside the school and in the halls while the cops were pistol whipping terrified teenagers on camera inside the school?
So why weren't the police alerted to the running students so they could be caught...more importantly why weren't they prepared for the running dope dealers. hmmmmm
And lastly with all these bags of dope and pills being thrown around WHY OH WHY does it say NO DRUGS were found?
What a crock of chit I just read...all that crap supposedly going on and the drug dogs only found some supposed residue on 12 bookbags.........gimme a frikkin break.
between:
the war on drugs
the war on guns
the war to censor 'offensive' speech
the war on terror
the war on (fill in the blank with whatever else)
a lot of opportunities seem to be emerging for "authorities" of some stripe or another, to violate about any "inalienable" right the founders THOUGHT they were enumerating.... is that not so?
Do you have any hope or expectation that this can be changed in our lifetime?
between:
the war on drugs
the war on guns
the war to censor 'offensive' speech
the war on terror
the war on (fill in the blank with whatever else)
a lot of opportunities seem to be emerging for "authorities" of some stripe or another, to violate about any "inalienable" right the founders THOUGHT they were enumerating.... is that not so?
Exactly.. We have become a nation of 'scofflaws' because we have 'bought into' the prohibitionists mindset, -- that society can control 'sin'..
Do you have any hope or expectation that this can be changed in our lifetime?
Nope. Until a big enough disaster happens, [a drug bust 'Kent State' type incident?] the paulsens of this world will continue to think that swat teams are the answer.
The damage here to kids using drugs is incalculable.
Nonetheless, these kids have indeed been "taught a lesson" about their country, and it is one which will not easily be un-TAUGHT.
It is that the Constitution and its Bill Of Rights are entirely malleable. It is that they, as Americans, are subject to authorities with weapons.
It is that our entire philosophy of Liberty and Freedom is nothing but lip service.
When, one day, their country asks them to serve it, which WILL come, they will remember well what happened. And NO sophistry, word-wizardry, or spinning by you or anyone else will erase the image of a gun muzzle from their minds, pointed at the innocent as well as the guilty with NO regard for the rights of either.
And all because you, and others like you, refuse to abandon your superstitions regarding drugs.
Get this: The harm from drug abuse PALES compared to that from the abuse of Rights. THAT is the truth.
You and your cohorts have taught these kids that they are subjects, not citizens, and that the gun and the badge render them completely without rights.
Don't be surprised if, when THEY are needed to serve their nation, they simply chuckle at the hypocrisy.
Some days, RP, you truly disgust me.
Bump To The Top.
Just so you know, it can be done correctly (by a better agency - BCSO):
No drugs found at Westview
Deputies search bookbags at middle school
BY SEANNA ADCOX
Of The Post and Courier Staff
GOOSE CREEK--A drug search Tuesday morning at Westview Middle School, which turned up nothing, bore no resemblance to a controversial raid at another Goose Creek school four months earlier, school administrators said.
The random, 45-minute search conducted by the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office followed the Berkeley County School District's new policy on student searches, approved last month, said Dave Barrow, the district's secondary schools supervisor.
The three German shepherds used in the search were kept separate from students. The certified dogs entered classrooms to sniff students' bookbags only after teachers took their students into another hallway. The dogs searched about half of the school's classrooms, said Principal Cassandra Jennings.
They did not sniff any drugs or residue on the backpacks, so no students were searched individually, Barrow said.
The tactics differed from those used Nov. 5, when Goose Creek police officers rushed into Stratford High's main hallway about 6:45 a.m., several with guns drawn. The officers ordered students to the floor and handcuffed about a dozen, as the constantly barking police dog sniffed backpacks close by. Surveillance images and police video of the raid drew national criticism and two federal lawsuits, which were combined in court Monday.
The Goose Creek Police Department also has jurisdiction at Westview Middle. But its officials declined Jennings' request to conduct a drug search there.
City spokeswoman Casey Fletcher said there were two reasons the request was declined. First, the department's dog handler, Officer Jeff Parrish, resigned in late November for personal reasons. Parrish had been with the department since 1996. His replacement is still in training with Major, the dog.
Second, the department is developing a school response policy and does not want to conduct a search until that is completed, Fletcher said. She did not know when that might be done.
Berkeley County Sheriff's Maj. Ricky Driggers said Tuesday's search involved normal tactics for the department.
"Until the Stratford incident, this was nothing but a routine job for us. As far as we're concerned, it's still routine," he said. "We've done the same routine for 10 years."
Planning for the Westview Middle search began about a month ago, Barrow said.
"This went off without incident," he said. "We're very pleased."
Jennings said this is the first drug search at the school in her three years as principal. She said she wanted to be proactive in preventing drugs on campus after hearing rumors of marijuana use. She plans to hold more such searches in the future. She sent a note home to parents Tuesday.
"I don't have a problem with drug searches as long as they don't affect children's or teachers' or administrators' rights," said Kathleen Crumpler, president of the Westview Middle Parent Teacher Organization. "I believe the Stratford search was a problem. I think children's rights were infringed upon."
But this search was conducted properly, she said after talking to her daughter. She believes searches act as a good deterrent to keep drugs off campus.
"People shouldn't think that just because these are younger kids, they can't get into stuff," said parent Teresa Draheim.
Her daughter, eighth-grader Stefanie Jay, said a dog never came near her.
"I don't like big dogs," she said. "They scare me."
But she was upset a dog drooled on her backpack. She wiped it off with her foot so she wouldn't have to touch it.
"It was the talk of the day at the beginning of school, but it wasn't really a big thing," she said.
This was the second drug search in Berkeley County since Stratford's. A search Feb. 18 at Berkeley Alternative School in Moncks Corner involved dogs sniffing backpacks on school buses after students emptied them. That search also turned up nothing, Barrow said.
But don't worry. With the principal resigning and the upcoming civil lawsuits, I predict that drugs will be back in the hallways within a year. That should make you real happy.
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