RAID MIGHT HAVE BROKEN DRUG-DOG RULES

Video Shows Goose Creek Police Using Canines In School Sweep, Apparently
Violating Procedure.

CHARLESTON (AP) - The Goose Creek Police Department appears not to have
followed its own rules on using drug dogs in its guns-drawn raid at
Stratford High School last month.

A videotape the Police Department released shows a police dog passing close
by students who had been forced to kneel on the floor during the Nov. 5
raid. It also captures an officer lecturing students as that part of the
raid ends.

"If you're an innocent bystander to what has transpired here today, you can
thank those people that are bringing dope into this school. Every time we
think there's dope in this school, we're going to be coming up here to deal
with it, and this is one of the ways we can deal with it," the unidentified
officer says.

More than 100 students were in the hallway that morning as a police dog
passed close by, barking and excitedly sniffing their backpacks. At one
point, the dog grabs a backpack with its mouth and shakes it. At another
time, the dog jumps briefly on its hind legs onto his handler as they check
students huddling in an alcove.

The department's procedure on "illegal narcotics detection" states, "Only
after the on-scene supervisor has cleared the area of all personnel will
the canine enter and conduct an illegal narcotics detection."

The tape shows Goose Creek police officer Jeff Parrish and Major, a
Czechoslovakian shepherd, entering the hallway.

Jim Watson, secretary of the North American Police Work Dog Association,
says Goose Creek's K-9 unit is certified. Watson won't comment on the
Stratford search, which found no drugs, but says he knows Parrish and Major.

"Jeff is nationally certified, and he has a helluva good dog. He has
excellent control of the dog," Watson said.

Major is an extremely sociable dog that "loves to search for narcotics,"
Watson said.

Barking during a drug search isn't a threat, Watson said. Dogs are taught
to treat finding drugs as a game of hide and seek.

"Why is a dog barking?" Watson said. "It's not because it wants to bite
someone. He just wants to play that game."

Some dogs are trained as passive alert dogs and will sit when drugs are
found. Others are aggressive alert canines and bark or take other actions.

"The Supreme Court has ruled you can search a person with a passive alert
dog," said Cpl. Louis Reed of the Charleston Police Department. "We have a
passive alert dog, but we still don't search people because of the
possibility of someone saying something happened to them or that they felt
threatened."

Other agencies, including Reed's, wouldn't allow police dogs to go near
children during drug sweeps.

"We don't want people to say they were threatened by the dog," Reed said.

Students could stare, make catcalls or provoke a dog in other ways, he
said. While Reed won't comment on the specifics of the Stratford High
sweep, "it's not how my unit would have done it," he said.

In a lawsuit filed Friday, students say they felt frightened as the dog
passed by, and they say the dog was unruly and appeared to be unresponsive
to commands.

Charleston's prosecutor last week turned an investigation into the raid
over to state Attorney General Henry McMaster.

Apart from a surveillance camera that triggered the national reaction to
the raid, a police officer videotaped the incident. The Post and Courier of
Charleston obtained a copy of that tape under the state's Freedom of
Information Act.

That recording begins seconds after a team of Goose Creek officers sealed
one of Stratford's hallways. Two officers can be seen with their guns drawn

"Get on the ground! Get on the ground!" an officer yells as students fall
to the floor. "Hands on your head, hands on your head, do you understand?"

A few minutes later, a voice on a loudspeaker says, "All right, bring the
dogs down."

Goose Creek principal George C. McCrackin is heard saying: "All right, the
dogs are coming through. Just stay still."