Apparently ABC News's Nightline is going to present a report tonight about the guns-drawn drug raid that cost a high school principal his job with Stratford High School in Goose Creek, SC. Should be interesting, both for the topic and to see how they handle the story.
From Nightline's daily e-mail newsletter:
A drug raid gone bad. Roll tape--police explode onto the scene with guns drawn. More than one hundred potential suspects are forced to the ground and searched by drug dogs. All are facing the walls or facedown on the floor, some with hands tied behind backs and others with hands behind heads. Sounds like a typical day for the D.E.A., or a major narcotics unit, or even an episode of COPS --not for a highly rated, suburban high school.Many in the tight-knit community of Goose Creek, South Carolina wonder how this could happen here? Was it a case of an overzealous principal? Police misconduct? A necessary evil to combat drugs in schools? The story becomes even more complicated when you learn that the majority of these "potential suspects" were black students, who are the overwhelming minority at this school. Suddenly, the question turns to one of race and racism. You will see that in this community, the answers do not come easy.
UPDATE: The segment was pretty good; i.e., mostly fair and balanced. The principal was a popular and dedicated educator who just went over the edge in this case. There were no interviews with the Goose Creek police, which is a crucial omission. The show lost fairness when it concluded with an interview with "legal scholar" Professor Christopher Edley -- former Clinton advisor and a member of the ideological U.S. Civil Rights Commission -- who put on a very smooth veneer but just couldn't help slipping in words like "caste" and "apartheid."
Posted by Alan at January 8, 2004 05:23 PM