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  • South Carolina Drug Sweep: Police State?

    November 8, 2003
    S.C. Probes High School Drug Sweep
    By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Filed at 4:30 p.m. ET

    GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (AP) -- State police are investigating a drug sweep in which more than a dozen local officers charged into a crowded high school hallway with their guns drawn and handcuffed students.

    No drugs or weapons were found during the sweep, and there were no drug-related arrests.

    Videotape from Stratford High School surveillance cameras Wednesday morning shows dozens of students, some of them handcuffed, sitting on a hallway floor against the walls as police officers watch them with guns drawn and police dogs sniff backpacks and bags strewn across the hall.

    ``I'm absolutely outraged,'' said Danny Partin, whose stepson attends Stratford. ``This is supposed to be a free country, not a police state.''

    Prosecutor Ralph Hoisington told the Charleston Post & Courier in Saturday editions that he asked the State Law Enforcement Division on Friday to look into possible police misconduct.

    ``I don't think there's anything wrong at all with law enforcement addressing a problem in a high school, but I have serious concerns about the need for restraining students and drawing weapons,'' Hoisington said. ``I don't want to send my child to a school and find out guns are drawn on them.''

    Investigators should have called suspected students to the principal's office to check their bags for drugs if they believed there was drug-dealing going on, said Graham Boyd, director of the drug policy project for the American Civil Liberties Union.

    ``You absolutely cannot bring police with guns drawn into a school,'' Boyd said. He called the search illegal.

    Stratford Principal George McCrackin said that he had talked with police about what he called a growing drug problem at the school and that the police responded.

    The students didn't know what was happening when the officers rushed in, student Maurice Harris Jr. told NBC's ``Today'' show Saturday.

    ``I was frightened because they had guns in their hands,'' Harris said. ``I thought one of the guns was going to go off and shoot or kill somebody, so I just got down to my knees and covered my head for protection.''

    Goose Creek police Lt. Dave Aarons said the guns were drawn as ``a matter of officer safety.''

    ``I don't think it was an overreaction,'' he said. ``Anytime you have qualified information regarding drugs and large amounts of money, there's a reasonable assumption weapons are involved.''

    The officers handcuffed students who failed to ``respond to repeated police instruction,'' Aarons said.

    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.


    I was appalled when I saw this on the news. What a bunch of fascist cops. Going into a school like that, handcuffing innocent students, and conducting a search with guns drawn as all those kids cower in fear. And BTW, that search turned up nothing. I'd like to know what led the police to do that raid. If they had specific information about some students, those students should have been removed quietly. That blatant show of force is disgusting. I'm concerned that this is a trend in the United States that we are turning into a police state.
    To us, it is the BEAST.

  • #2
    and cops are supposed to be the "good guys"

    not when they act like this . . .
    -connorkimbro
    "We're losing the war on AIDS. And drugs. And poverty. And terror. But we sure took it to those Nazis. Man, those were the days."

    -theonion.com

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    • #3
      I wish I lived in that high school, as I would enjoy the college and first house the cops would be paying me, following the lawsuits.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Vesayen
        I wish I lived in that high school, as I would enjoy the college and first house the cops would be paying me, following the lawsuits.
        Exactly what I was thinking, except I would buy a house with that money out of the city, because 1) The School District will be bankrupt once the lawyers are finished, and 2) Look at how their cops act in that town.
        Pentagenesis for Civ III
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        • #5
          I wonder how much chance any complaint has in court.
          “Now we declare… that the law-making power or the first and real effective source of law is the people or the body of citizens or the prevailing part of the people according to its election or its will expressed in general convention by vote, commanding or deciding that something be done or omitted in regard to human civil acts under penalty or temporal punishment….” (Marsilius of Padua, „Defensor Pacis“, AD 1324)

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          • #6
            Very good chance. Police are drawing guns on "children".

            These poor children will not be able to study, suffer from PTSD, be afraid to go to school, need to switch schools. Hee hee.
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            • #7
              there's a fine line between using just enough force as necessary, and overdoing it.

              unless these cops somehow felt threatened when they went into the school, i cannot think of a reason why they'd need their guns drawn.
              B♭3

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              • #8
                I used to think that such practices have been deemed legal before in the "war" on drugs. The cases would usually have been concerning members of the underclass, so I'd see this just as an expansion of that practice. Was that school primarily frequented by middle class children?
                “Now we declare… that the law-making power or the first and real effective source of law is the people or the body of citizens or the prevailing part of the people according to its election or its will expressed in general convention by vote, commanding or deciding that something be done or omitted in regard to human civil acts under penalty or temporal punishment….” (Marsilius of Padua, „Defensor Pacis“, AD 1324)

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                • #9
                  This is twisted, brutal and wrong.

                  For more information check out www.YouthRights.org.

                  E-mail the school Principal here:
                  GeorgeMcCrackin@Berkeley.k12.sc.us
                  Captain of Team Apolyton - ISDG 2012

                  When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by HershOstropoler
                    I used to think that such practices have been deemed legal before in the "war" on drugs. The cases would usually have been concerning members of the underclass, so I'd see this just as an expansion of that practice. Was that school primarily frequented by middle class children?
                    Them boys is stretchin' it a fair bit, though.

                    The whole "guns drawn" and charge in thing is quite permissible when serving a search or arrest warrant and there is probable cause to believe the subjects covered under the warrant are armed or likely to forcibly resist. Public safety is also supposed to be an issue, i.e. you don't do a Wyatt Earp in crowded shopping mall.

                    The supposed authority to go into the school was that tha man done viewed some videotapes of unAmerican dope dealing rat there in that very hall.

                    Unfortunately, cracker cops or not, that doesn't equate to either probable cause to believe any particular suspect will resist. So the cops are screwed here, and rightly so.
                    When all else fails, blame brown people. | Hire a teen, while they still know it all. | Trump-Palin 2016. "You're fired." "I quit."

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                    • #11
                      Goose Creek police Lt. Dave Aarons said the guns were drawn as ``a matter of officer safety.''
                      Yeah, sure, like a high school kid is going to shoot back.

                      I can understand the chance of fighting back if it were a shady crack house or something, but IT'S A ****ING SCHOOL. With KIDS.

                      1) The School District will be bankrupt once the lawyers are finished,
                      The police department probably will be as well, and what's ironic is they'd probably have to cut protection to make up for cuts resulting from any lawsuit.

                      Well, you give up reasonable rights in a school building (lockers can be searched is one)...backpack searches are understandable as well...but handcuffing kids, holding guns to their heads? That's such a grossly excessive abuse of power...

                      What's more worrying is the thought that there are kids somewhere that are stupid enough to fight back against the officers. I can see the headlines now: "Drug Sweep Leaves 3 Dead", "Officer Says Firing Was in Self-Defense"...call it a nightmare situation, but police departments shouldn't even be opening themselves up to that kind of risk at all.
                      meet the new boss, same as the old boss

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                      • #12
                        "Them boys is stretchin' it a fair bit, though."

                        Well they have their excuse:

                        "Anytime you have qualified information regarding drugs and large amounts of money, there's a reasonable assumption weapons are involved.''

                        "The officers handcuffed students who failed to "respond to repeated police instruction,'' Aarons said."

                        So what does it take? Is that suspicion enough? If there has been a gun problem at that school before, would that be enough?
                        “Now we declare… that the law-making power or the first and real effective source of law is the people or the body of citizens or the prevailing part of the people according to its election or its will expressed in general convention by vote, commanding or deciding that something be done or omitted in regard to human civil acts under penalty or temporal punishment….” (Marsilius of Padua, „Defensor Pacis“, AD 1324)

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                        • #13
                          I woulda been handcuffed. I woulda been standing there telling the cops they had no right and screaming about the Constitution off the top of my mouth.
                          Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by chegitz guevara
                            I woulda been handcuffed. I woulda been standing there telling the cops they had no right and screaming about the Constitution off the top of my mouth.
                            Most high school students don't know what the constitution is, let alone thier rights under it, and that's what Ashcroft and the rest of his G-men want.

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                            • #15
                              I used to live in Goose Creek!

                              I'm so proud. I went to prototype at the Charlesont Naval Weapons station which is located adjacent to goose creek.

                              The video is a bit disturbing. It seemed like every student was forced to put their hands on their head. And they found nothing . All for silly things like drugs.

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