Buzzby

Weed Watch: Goose Creek Police Geese
Jordan Smith | Austin Chronicle | 07/21/2006

Nearly three years after police in the Charleston, S.C., suburb of Goose Creek made an early-morning, guns-drawn raid at Stratford High School on an ultimately futile hunt for student marijuana, cash, and weapons stashes, the ACLU announced last week that a federal court had at last approved a "landmark" settlement with students who sued school officials and police that, in part, incorporates a federal consent decree reinforcing the students' Fourth Amendment rights.

Former Stratford principal George McCracken (who resigned shortly after the raid debacle) precipitated the raid by calling police to ask for their help with the school's "drug problem." Unfortunately, police created a far bigger problem for local officials when they stormed into the high school at 6:40am on Nov. 5, 2003 – recorded by school surveillance and police cameras – forcing students to the ground, handcuffing them, and holding guns to their heads while police searched backpacks and lockers in for contraband; they found nothing. Although African-American students made up less than 25% of the school population, minority students were a majority of those detained in the raid, in part because of the district's busing policy, which meant that certain students regularly arrived at school well before the rest of the student body. "I felt like I had less rights than other people that day," 16-year-old Joshua Ody said in a press statement.

In the aftermath of the raid, the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project took the case on behalf of 20 individual students, filing suit in December 2003, arguing that the students' right to be free from unlawful search and seizure had been violated and that police had used unnecessary force during the dawn raid. On July 11, the ACLU announced that it had reached a settlement deal that includes a $1.6 million fund to pay for counseling for the affected students – money awarded in individual damages to be paid by the Goose Creek PD and the city – and the institution of a consent decree that declared the raid unconstitutional and that bans the future use of such raids. Indeed, the decree bans police from conducting law-enforcement activity on school grounds without a warrant or probable cause. "Goose Creek students now have a unique place in our nation," Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project said in a press release. "They are the only students in the nation who have complete protection of their Fourth Amendment rights of search and seizure" while on public school property.

It was also a good week for drug reformers up in Alaska, who claimed victory July 10 in the state's renewed fight over whether possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults should be recriminalized. For years Alaska courts have ruled that the state's constitution – which outlines a firm right to privacy – means adult possession and use of small quantities of pot is beyond the reach of criminal law. Or so it was until Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski signed into law on June 2 a bill to recriminalize pot possession; the ACLU reacted quickly, however, filing for an injunction that was granted by a state superior court last week. Until the Alaska Supreme Court says otherwise, Superior Court Judge Patricia Collins ruled, no state court has the ability to overturn the high court's 1975 ruling (in a case styled Ravin v. State) and to recriminalize pot possession and use by adults at home. "Unless and until" the state's highest court "directs otherwise, Ravin is the law in this state," Collins wrote in her opinion. Not surprisingly, the state is expected to appeal.

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