HIGH SCHOOL DRUG RAID RATTLES TOWN

Race Is Subtext As Ex-Chicagoan Joins Lawsuit Accusing S.C. Officials Of
Violating Students' Rights

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. -- LaTise Simpson grew up amid the poverty and
violence of Altgeld Gardens, the sprawling public housing project on
Chicago's Far South Side. She moved to the relative quiet of this
Charleston suburb so her children would never know such a life.

So Simpson was all the more enraged last fall when her 14-year-old
son, LeQuan, found himself among the 107 students at Goose Creek's
Stratford High School subjected to a raid by police who stormed the
hallways with guns drawn and a drug-sniffing dog, looking for narcotics.

"Right after his dad dropped him off, he was pulled by the collar,
pushed up against the wall and told to get down with the gun pointed
at him," Simpson said of LeQuan, a point guard for Stratford's junior
varsity basketball team and now co-plaintiff in a federal lawsuit. The
suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union charges police and
school officials with violating students' constitutional right against
unreasonable search and seizure. A similar lawsuit has been filed by
Ron Motley, a South Carolina plaintiffs' lawyer who became famous when
he took on Big Tobacco.

The raid also prompted the state attorney general's office to open an
investigation into the raid in which some students were handcuffed.

Last week, an outside review panel recommended changes to school
district policy to ensure that searches are "limited in scope" and
"not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the person
searched and the nature of the suspected infraction."

But it is race more than age or sex that is at the heart of the
controversy over the raid, which found no drugs and involved mostly
black students in the mostly white school.

The incident has served as another reminder that in the Lowcountry of
South Carolina, as in so many places across the nation, racial
tensions often simmer just below the surface of everyday life.

After video of the raid aired nationwide, the fallout forced the only
principal the school has ever had, George McCrackin, to step down.
McCrackin, who is white, has been replaced by a black woman.

Retired Assistant Takes Over

Mildred Brevard, a former assistant principal once hired by McCrackin,
came out of semiretirement to help restore peace to this middle-class
high school, which sits along a wide, tree-lined boulevard and proudly
touts its star rifle squad and National Science Bowl team.

"Having been an administrator at Stratford previously, the transition
was easier for everyone," Brevard said Thursday. "Now that the
constant disruption of the media spotlight has subsided, Stratford
High is back on track and stronger for the experience."

The raid wasn't the first racially tinged incident at the school.

Several years ago at Stratford, which is on land that used to be a
plantation, several students were suspended for refusing to take off
T-shirts promoting a rap group. The shirts, which replaced the red,
white and blue of the Confederate flag with the colors of African
nationalism--red, black and green--had offended some white students.

"We have laws now, but you can't change hearts. And it's problems of
the heart that keep cropping up," said Rev. Joseph Darby, first vice
president of the state chapter of the NAACP. The Civil War, he said,
still shapes life here. "There's a cessation of hostilities, but it's
not over in South Carolina--not by a long shot."

The Nov. 5 raid at the high school in Goose Creek--where nearly 79
percent of the 29,000 residents are white and 14 percent are
black--came as the South Carolina coast has struggled to put out a
series of racially charged brushfires.

In the nearby city of North Charleston, police in November fatally
shot a mentally ill African-American man armed with a knife after he
had stolen a ham from a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. That prompted Rev.
Jesse Jackson, who was born in Greenville, to return to his native
state and lead protests of the shooting and the raid at Stratford High.

And in Charleston, the police chief, who is black, was forced last
month to make a qualified apology for his comment on the city's 18
homicides in 2003.

"I refuse to take responsibility every time one black son of a bitch
kills another," Chief Reuben Greenberg had said. "There are social
factors much more powerful than anything we can concoct in the
Charleston Police Department."

Greenberg later appeared with local civil rights leaders and said he
was "apologizing to anybody who mistook my words." Officials cite cameras

In the Goose Creek drug raid, police and school officials have been
less contrite. The local superintendent said he was sorry the raid
happened the way it did. But officials also pointed out that school
surveillance cameras had indicated students were selling drugs inside
the school. In fact, drug arrests at Stratford had spiked, from 16 all
of last school year to 15 in the first three months of this school
year alone.

As for the high number of black students subjected to the raid, which
occurred about 6:40 a.m., the spokeswoman for the county school system
said it was "a coincidence" because at that time of the morning buses
drop off students from predominantly black neighborhoods.

"Drug dogs don't sniff color," said the spokeswoman, Pam
Bailey.

During a news conference at the time, Lt. Dave Aarons of the Goose
Creek Police Department said of the raid: "I don't think it was an
overreaction. I believe it was one method, one tactical method, by
which we could safely approach the problem to ensure that everyone was
safe."

McCrackin declined to comment when reached by phone at home, but he
told a local TV station after the raid, "I'll utilize whatever forces
that I deem necessary to keep this campus safe and clean."

Introducing Brevard to the faculty recently, McCrackin told teachers
that he resigned because he didn't want the microscope that he lived
under to be directed at the school.

But the actions of the police and McCrackin, who helped oversee the
raid, appear to have divided the school community along racial lines.

"I saw the whole thing. I didn't see anyone get a gun put in their
face," said Jennifer Johnson, 15, a freshman at Stratford. Like some
other white students, she said McCrackin should not have stepped down.

"He was principal here for 20 years," she said.

Several black parents saw things differently.

"Look, I'm from a military family, and I don't think it's fair to put
children through trauma, no matter what they did," said M.P. Stewart,
55, whose son is a senior at Stratford but was not among the students
searched that November morning. "Even as an adult, I don't want a gun
pulled on me."

Parents of those involved were more adamant.

"My husband is a police officer for another county," Simpson said.
"Even if he wasn't, I wouldn't appreciate anyone pushing my son
against the wall and pointing a gun at him. At that time of the
morning, the only students in the school are athletes or kids involved
in band or some other function."

`Someone who understands'

Having Brevard return as McCrackin's interim replacement seems to have
salved some of the wounds.

"Even though it's temporary, I think that's good," Simpson said, "not
because of her color but because she is someone who understands all
the kids from her being there before."

Still, Simpson questioned the actions of the authorities, saying that
if they had indeed been watching surveillance cameras for several days
before the raid, they should have known better whom to search.

"There was no need," she said, "to subject 107 good kids to what they
were subjected to."