RAID APPALLING, BUT NOT EXAMPLE OF CRIMINAL ACT

We concur with state Attorney General Henry McMaster, who says there
is much to be learned from a drug raid last year at Goose Creek's
Stratford High School. Mr. McMaster recently concluded that the raid
broke no laws. It is hard to question that decision. Any criminal
charges filed against the officers involved would have been difficult
to prosecute, certainly. And there is every indication that Mr.
McMaster seriously and thoroughly investigated the matter.

The attorney general spent eight months looking into the raid. He
reviewed the legal paper trail, including information from interviews
and investigations by the State Law Enforcement Division and the 9th
Circuit Solicitor's office. The attorney general personally visited
the corridor where more than 100 Stratford students had been held at
gunpoint, some of them handcuffed. The nation was appalled by images
of the scene, captured on the school's own videotaping system. They
include threatening, drug-sniffing dogs and at least one officer with
his gun pointed directly at the students.

It has since been learned there are additional surveillance camera
recordings of the day, which the school district did not release.
Berkeley County Solicitor Ralph Hoisington told the Charleston Post
and Courier that the additional footage shows officers handcuffing
children who appeared to be complying with officers' orders. That
contradicts what the newspaper found in the Goose Creek Police
Department's official report, which said 10 or 12 students were
restrained for failing to comply with officers' orders.

In addition, it has become clear since the Nov. 5 incident that the
Goose Creek Police Department violated its own policies in allowing
the dogs to search the children. The students should have been moved
out of the area before the dogs sniffed lockers, bookbags, jackets and
the like.

Despite the lack of any criminal prosecution for the events of the day
- - that includes against the students, by the way, as no illegal drugs
were found - the fallout from the raid is ongoing.

Longtime Stratford High School Principal George McCrackin resigned and
was reassigned to a district post. Civil lawsuits on behalf of some of
the children held in the hall are pending. The Berkeley County School
District has revised its policies concerning student searches,
including a directive that physical contact between dogs and students
be avoided. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has traveled to South Carolina to
rally on the students' behalf, and some of them even appeared on the
Montel Williams show questioning their treatment. It is safe to say
the whole matter hasn't burnished South Carolina's reputation a bit.

Perhaps there will be those who will call Mr. McMaster's response
insufficient. However, he expressed extreme frustration with the
officers' behavior, calling it "grossly inappropriate."

That it was, and we can only hope that nothing like it is ever seen in
the school halls of our state, or any other.