DRUG RAID ON PRINCIPAL'S HOME PRODUCES MANY QUESTIONS

Kansas City police say they are certain an undercover detective bought
crack cocaine at a house on Brooklyn Avenue before other police officers
raided the residence Tuesday.

Belinda Goolsby is just as adamant that no one she knows has ever taken
drugs into her home.

It's not unusual for people to plead innocence when their house is raided.
Some of them insist that police have hit the wrong house, even as officers
are pulling illegal substances out of dresser drawers.

But Goolsby is an elementary school principal. She lives in the house with
her 12-year-old son. The only person besides herself who has a key to the
residence, she said, is her father, who is in his 70s.

"My life consists of work, the church and home," Goolsby said Friday. "I
don't date. I don't have a boyfriend. No one comes into my house."

Goolsby's colleagues know her as a hard-working principal at a Kansas City
School District elementary school.

Her pastor, the Rev. William F. Snorgrass of Progressive Baptist Church,
knows her as the chairwoman of the pastor's aid committee and director of
the inspirational choir.

"I know that family well, and I can assure you there's no activity going on
in that house," Snorgrass said. "That had to be a mistake."

Not so, said Capt. Patty Conway of the Police Department's Street Narcotics
Unit.

"It's very clear that drugs were sold from that residence," she said. "It's
all been verified and checked and double-checked."

Neither Goolsby nor her son were suspects in a drug case, Conway said. But
she said police are certain that a man who is a suspect sold drugs from
inside Goolsby's house to an undercover officer.

On Tuesday police kicked in the front door of Goolsby's house and searched
the residence. They found nothing illegal. Officers left the search warrant
on the living room sofa and departed.

Goolsby was attending a conference in Atlanta that day. Her son attended
school and spent the night with his grandparents.

Goolsby returned home Wednesday. The first thing she noticed was the
basement door was open and a light was on. She thought her father might
have been in the house while she was gone.

Then she saw cabinets open and articles strewn around. The front door was
splintered, and she suspected a burglary. But the television, the VCR and
her son's keyboard were untouched.

Items were dumped out of drawers in Goolsby's bedroom. Her son's room was
left intact.

"To me, this is an invasion of privacy," Goolsby said. "I would just like
to know who was allegedly in my house and how did they get in the house."

But that information will be hard to come by.

To protect the identity of the undercover officer, police will not disclose
the date or time of the alleged drug buy, Conway said. Because nothing
illegal was found in the raid, authorities will not make an arrest or
identify the suspect. Only if the suspect is arrested and charged at some
point might Goolsby's questions be answered.

Since her return from Atlanta, Goolsby and her son have stayed at her
parents' house. She is photographing the rooms, looking for a lawyer and
filling out forms from the Office of Citizen Complaints.

As a principal, Goolsby says, she is very involved in the war on drugs. She
just never thought her living room would become the battle front.