Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

South Carolina Employs Old Tricks on New Negroes

Denmark Vesey must be rolling in his grave. For those of you not familiar with the event you can read this over at the NYTimes (free reg req.) what happened here is a clear example of the demonization of black youth ( with some help of other black people). The police decided to stage a raid at the particular time that most, or at least many, of the black students arrived, by bus, to school. On the principal's command, they jumped out of varied rooms and closets with dogs and searched for "drugs."

For many residents of Goose Creek, a pleasant bedroom community north of Charleston, it was particularly disturbing that though blacks make up less than a quarter of the 2,700 students at the high school, two-thirds of the 107 students caught up in the sweep were black.

As usual the racial profilers got it wrong. As we know from research done on profiling in New Jersey and Maryland, Black motorists make up a small proportion of those using the highways, they do however, account for a disproportionatly large percentage of those people stopped and searched on the highway. They also are found to have drugs on them in lesser proportion than whites that are stopped. The hard truth is that as a population white persons use and sell more drugs than blacks. Any drug dealer in any urban area will tell you this. As PE said: "don't believe the hype!"

One question that could be asked is had the "raid" occured when all students were present what would the proportions have been? The second question I have is what happened to "innocent until proven guilty" and probable cause You must have probable cause to arrest, handcuff or otherwise detain a person for a crime. When warrants are given out by judges, as far as i know these warrants are given for specific locations and persons. What judge ok'd the warrant to walk in and indescriminately pick on constitutionally innocent persons? What was the probable cause? Is going to school on a bus probable cause? exactly how would they explain to the trial judge how the evidence was obtained? Illegal search anyone?

The principal of the school is obviously defending the tactics employed here. I do wonder if this principal's child attends this school or if he would be sanguine about the situation had his child been put on the floor, handcuffed and had a dog put on him or her. Not to be simply a complainer, what t his principal should have done if he suspected drug activity in his school was to inform the police that he suspected so and so and had an undercover officer come in and make contact with the suspected individual. The suspected student, if in fact a drug dealer would have tipped thier hand eventually. A similar situation would apply for drug use.

Anyway, I think that the principal should be fired immediately as well as any of the police department that was involved in the approval of this plan. They should be sued till they are homeless.

links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/09/national/09RAID.html?ex=1071550800&en=b6659f3887b8462e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE