COMMUNITY SPLIT OVER DRUG SWEEP AT LOWCOUNTRY SCHOOL

GOOSE CREEK -- This small community just a few miles north of
Charleston is split on whether police went too far last week when they
conducted a high school drug sweep with their weapons drawn.

More than 100 Stratford High School students were crouched in a
hallway, some were restrained with plastic handcuffs, while 14
officers and a drug dog searched for drugs. None were found and no
drug arrests were made.

Some parents are angry over the treatment of their children --
captured on surveillance video and seen repeatedly on national
television news programs. Others, including some students and the
school principal, say the sweep was a necessary evil to combat a
growing drug problem at the school.

The aggressiveness of the officers has brought scrutiny from several
civil rights groups including the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, which says black students were targeted
in the search. State police and other outside agencies have been asked
to investigate the incident.

"I personally think it went too far," said 17-year-old Jeff Carver,
one of the students in the hallway while police searched book bags.
"They didn't have to point guns and things. They didn't even find nothing."

Carver, who stood up during the raid after he heard a dog barking, was
sent to the principal's office for disobeying orders and suspended for
three days. A dozen students who police say disobeyed orders were restrained.

"I'm angry," parent Sharon Smalls said at a Berkeley County school
board meeting Tuesday. "My child was slammed to the ground with a gun
to his head. Someone has to take responsibility."

Stratford High School seems an unlikely place for drugs. It is nestled
among trees near the end of a winding road lined with upscale homes.
The town of Goose Creek has 29,000 residents and a median family
income of $45,919 -- well above the state median of $37,082.

But two arrests for drug distribution have been made at the school
three months into the year. That's half as many were made during the
entire 2002-2003 school year. And while no drugs were found during the
raid, a dog reacted to narcotics residue in some book bags.

Senior Monique Gonzalez says she saw students during the raid running
from campus, dumping drugs along the way.

"There were kids throwing pills and things in the bushes. People were
taking bags out and throwing them on the ground," said Gonzalez, who
was standing less than 200 yards from the school during the raid at a
shopping center where students hang out.

Principal George McCrackin has said he asked the Goose Creek police to
come to the school to curb an "influx of drug activity."

"I think it was awesome," said Kristal Totolo, one of about 2,600
students who was not in the hallway during the raid. "I feel 10 times
safer knowing that the principal cares about it. He's not letting it
go."

Robin Stout of Summerville says she's among the small group of parents
who support the principal 100 percent. Stout says between the time her
son graduated from Stratford in 1997 and when her daughter began ninth
grade this year, she thinks drug use has increased.

"If I was going to place blame, it would have to be on the kids that
have been bringing drugs to school," Stout said. "I wouldn't blame the
school. I wouldn't blame the police department."

The way the raid was conducted was decided by the police department,
said city spokeswoman Casey Fletcher. "This was a one-time specific
operation to address a specific documented problem," she said.
"Anytime that there is drug activity going on, the police officers
believe that there's a reasonable expectation that there may be a
threat of violence."

Other schools had been through drug sweeps, but officers never
unholstered their guns, said Pam Bailey, district spokeswoman.

"If the principal or the district had known that the tactics that were
used were going to be used in this drug sweep, then the principal
would not have requested that assistance," Bailey said.

Because of the public criticism of the raid, the State Law Enforcement
Division is investigating how officers handled it. The police
department also is doing an internal review.

"We're not going to try to justify," Fletcher said. "We're just going
to put the facts out there. It's up to other investigative bodies like
SLED to decide what they think of these actions."

The SLED investigation could take up to two months, longer if it is
necessary to interview all students detained in the hallway,
prosecutor Ralph Hoisington said. The U.S. attorney's office will be
kept updated, he said.

Two representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union are in
Goose Creek this week talking to parents and students and have not
decided whether to file a lawsuit, said Anjuli Verma, an ACLU
spokeswoman.

The raid also has drawn criticism because some say black students were
targeted.

"I really felt it had a lot to do with prejudice because it was in an
area where mostly black children were," said Theresa Jenkins, who
lives in nearby Summerville.

While less than a quarter of the school's students are black, most of
the kids in the hallway where the drug sweep was conducted were black.

"The search seems to have been conducted in a part of the school
frequented by African-American students who ride buses to school," the
state NAACP chapter said in a news release.

"There was no reported effort to search arriving personal vehicles,
the predominant mode of transportation for white students."

The NAACP also criticized the overall handling of the raid and said it
would await the outcome of the SLED investigation.