GOOSE CREEK TRAVESTY

Absence Of U.S. Charges Doesn't Justify Drug Raid

The U.S. Justice Department says last year's police drug raid at
Stratford High School in Goose Creek didn't violate the civil rights
of the students, whom police confronted at gunpoint - and 18 of whom
police handcuffed. The case, said the department last week, is closed.

Maybe so. But even though Attorney General John Ashcroft's S.C.
representatives could find no violation of the federal civil rights
stature, most South Carolinians know deep down that the raid, which
netted no illegal drugs, was a travesty. Most would agree that the
students, especially the blacks singled out for rough treatment, will
go into adult life with an indelibly cynical view of "the system" that
treated them so shabbily.

The law may exonerate police and school officials for staging the
raid. But no one should pretend that the grave injustice they
perpetrated upon Stratford students has been remedied.