THE GREAT GOOSE CREEK RAID

Things keep getting worse for officials in Goose Creek, S.C.; so far two
separate lawsuits have been filed against the city's police department and
against administrators at the city's Stratford High School in connection
with a November drug raid there. On Nov. 5, cops in the Charleston suburb
burst into Stratford High at 6:40am with guns drawn, and ordered students to
get down on the floor while cops searched lockers and book bags for
marijuana; students who didn't move fast enough were handcuffed. No drugs
were found, but the raid has stirred up trouble for local police and for
Stratford principal George McCracken, who reportedly called for the raid to
help take care of the school's "drug problem."

McCracken later told reporters he had no idea the cops would come in with
their guns drawn -- but did nothing to stop them. Goose Creek Police Lt.
Dave Aarons said police drew their guns "as a matter of officer safety,"
reports the Drug Reform Coordination Network. Police had "qualified
information" that drugs and "large amounts of money" would be found at the
school -- so it stood to reason, Aaron said, that weapons would also be
found.

Unfortunately, it wasn't just the drugs that were elusive; police also
failed to find any stash of cash or weapons. But officials in Goose Creek
have found a big old pile of trouble. Seventeen students filed a class
action lawsuit Dec. 5, claiming that police and school officials had
violated both their due process rights, and their constitutional rights to
be free from unlawful searches. And on Dec. 15, the ACLU's Drug Policy
Litigation Project was slated to file a lawsuit on behalf of 20 individual
students, alleging Fourth Amendment search violations. But those two suits
may be just the tip of the iceberg. While the ACLU project's Anjuli Verma
told the DRCNet that the latest suit does not allege racial discrimination
"at this point," the facts of the case "speak for themselves." Nearly 75% of
Stratford's students are white, but 75% of the students caught up in the
raid were black, leading some to charge that the raid was specifically
intended to target the school's minority population, many of whom are bused
in to the school and thus arrive much earlier in the morning than the mostly
white neighborhood kids. For more info and pictures from the raid, check out
www.thememoryhole.org.