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Terrorizing high school raid might have broken dog rules Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/7440066.htmhttp://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/7440066.htm
Posted on Mon, Dec. 08, 2003
Raid might have broken drug-dog rules
Video shows Goose Creek police using canines in school sweep, apparently violating procedure
The Associated Press
CHARLESTON — 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.”
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