Pubdate: Tue, 09 Dec 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Tamar Lewin
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

RAID AT HIGH SCHOOL LEADS TO RACIAL DIVIDE, NOT DRUGS

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. -- 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."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager