Follow up on Goose Creek

A proper editorial in the Myrtle Beach, SC Sun News

Absence Of U.S.æ Charges Doesn’t Justify Drug Raid

The U.S.æ Justice Department says last year’s police drug raid at Stratford High School in Goose Creek didn’t violate the civil rights of the students, whom police confronted at gunpoint – and 18 of whom police handcuffed.æ The case, said the department last week, is closed.

Maybe so.æ But even though Attorney General John Ashcroft’s S.C.æ representatives could find no violation of the federal civil rights stature, most South Carolinians know deep down that the raid, which netted no illegal drugs, was a travesty.æ Most would agree that the students, especially the blacks singled out for rough treatment, will go into adult life with an indelibly cynical view of “the system” that treated them so shabbily.

The law may exonerate police and school officials for staging the raid.æ But no one should pretend that the grave injustice they perpetrated upon Stratford students has been remedied.