Questionable Police Stop Of Shaw University Black Students Evokes Outrage (videos)

The Sheriff claimed that race played no part in the stop, which may be true, *may be* because the words of police offi­cers in the United States are not worth the paper they are writ­ten on, thanks to the Supreme Court; they lie like old dirty rugs, with­out suf­fer­ing any consequences.
The Sheriff claims offi­cers could not see who was in the bus as the win­dows were tint­ed. That may be true, but once they approached the bus and spoke to the dri­ver, they sure­ly saw that the stu­dents were Black, and they absolute­ly knew they were col­lege students.
Now, the Sheriff claims he hates racism and can­not prac­tice it as his *jesus* would not allow it; please do not let me laugh until I barf.…
No one should be fooled by the pres­ence of the one black offi­cer; they are gen­er­al­ly there as win­dow dress­ing and are not allowed to make any deci­sions. Worse case is that black cops are worse than white ones, I mean, look at Clarence Thomas (TOM AZZ). Is there a worse judge, jurist, or what­ev­er they call him? He cer­tain­ly isn’t any­thing close to jus­tice so.…
After the offi­cers saw the stu­dents, why did they ask to search the bus?
I ask you to sus­pend your sense of bull­shit for a sec­ond and be real.…… why did they ask to search the lug­gage sec­tion of the bus?
I ask this ques­tion as a for­mer police offi­cer who did actu­al polic­ing, not as a race sol­dier doing race sol­der­ing. As an offi­cer see­ing stu­dents, I would cer­tain­ly have spo­ken to the dri­ver about dri­ving safe­ly, but I damn sure would not have asked to search the stu­den­t’s belong­ings; they would have been on their way.
It was out­ra­geous that they ran the Dog around the stu­den­t’s belong­ings and then rum­maged through their most inti­mate pos­ses­sions, clear­ly vio­lat­ing their four amend­ment rights.
This prac­tice of using canines to do end runs around the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is a prac­tice that has been made pos­si­ble again by the out-of-con­trol right-wing supreme court.
Experts warn that Dogs are wrong up to 70% of the time that they sig­nal a hit, and in any case, they sig­nal a hit because they expect to receive a treat from their handlers.
In the mean­time, the fourth amend­ment to the con­sti­tu­tion is out the door, and cit­i­zens are sub­ject to the Gestapo tac­tics like we see in Spartanburg coun­ty South Carolina.
In the end, they found noth­ing and issued a warn­ing to the dri­ver, so the Sheriff’s response was that the stu­dents and the University should have no prob­lem with the stop.
The dri­ver had no author­i­ty to give police per­mis­sion to search prop­er­ty that did not belong to him; that is the first order of busi­ness. The President of Shaw University, Dr. Paulette Dillard, wrote about how out­ra­geous the stop was and that it was rem­i­nis­cent of ear­li­er times in the United States when this was the prac­tice of police.
The Sheriff argued he wish­es racism would die the ugly death it deserves; what the sher­iff does not acknowl­edge is that it is his peo­ple, white peo­ple, who cre­at­ed it, and it is up to white peo­ple to end it.
Once the offi­cers saw that it was a bus­load of stu­dents, they [should] have cit­ed the dri­ver, whichev­er way they chose to, and end­ed the stop there.
Regardless of what police do, no mat­ter how out­ra­geous, there is a seg­ment of the American pop­u­la­tion that sup­ports it; we are not speak­ing to those deplorables; we know who they are.
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A South Carolina sher­iff said a his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­den­t’s state­ment accus­ing law enforce­ment offi­cers of racial pro­fil­ing in a recent bus stop was “just false.”

Shaw University President Paulette Dillard wrote she was “out­raged” after law enforce­ment offi­cers in Spartanburg County on Oct. 5 stopped a con­tract bus trans­port­ing stu­dents from the his­tor­i­cal­ly Black uni­ver­si­ty in Raleigh, North Carolina to a con­fer­ence in Atlanta.

Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright empha­sized at a Monday morn­ing press con­fer­ence that police offi­cers stopped the unmarked, “Greyhound-like bus” with tint­ed win­dows because it had been swerv­ing. The stop occurred as part of “Operation Rolling Thunder,” the depart­men­t’s annu­al week­long anti-drug cam­paign in which deputies and offi­cers with agen­cies from around the state patrol the coun­ty’s highways.

Democratic mem­bers of North Carolina’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion last week asked the Justice Department to inves­ti­gate the incident.

Dillard wrote that the scene was rem­i­nis­cent of the 1950s and ’60s: “armed police, inter­ro­gat­ing inno­cent Black stu­dents, con­duct­ing search­es with­out prob­a­ble cause, and blood-thirsty dogs.”

“This behav­ior of tar­get­ing Black stu­dents is unac­cept­able and will not be ignored nor tol­er­at­ed,” Dillard wrote. “Had the stu­dents been White, I doubt this deten­tion and search would have occurred.”

Wright said that a stu­dent helped the dri­ver answer offi­cers’ ques­tions and that none of the stu­dents were asked to leave the bus. A leashed dog “ran through the bag­gage,” turn­ing up noth­ing ille­gal, accord­ing to Wright. Police body cam­era footage show offi­cers search­ing sev­er­al bags in the bus’ under­bel­ly stor­age. The dri­ver received a warning.

“I wish racism would die the ugly, cru­el death it deserves,” Wright said. “If any­thing we’re ever doing is racist, I want to know it, I want to fix it and I want to nev­er let it hap­pen again. But this case right here has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with racism.”

Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Mueller said the offi­cers “did­n’t do any­thing wrong” and could not have known the races of the peo­ple inside the bus when they pulled it over.

Mueller added that the lead­ing cause of death in bus­es and com­mer­cial vehi­cles is dri­ver fatigue. Interstate 85, the high­way where offi­cers stopped the bus, is a “dead­ly cor­ri­dor,” accord­ing to Mueller.

“If my guys see a bus weav­ing in their lane, and they fail to stop it to check that dri­ver to make sure they’re not too sleepy, then we could have a bus­load of Shaw stu­dents that was involved in a trag­ic traf­fic fatal­i­ty,” Mueller said.

Body cam­era footage did not show any Shaw University insignia on the con­tract bus, which had the words “CHAUFFERED TRANSPORTATION” print­ed on its side. The Shaw University Communications Office did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to an email seek­ing comment.

The traf­fic stop comes after an April inci­dent in Georgia, where sher­if­f’s deputies pulled over the Delaware State University wom­en’s lacrosse team bus and searched it for drugs. Tony Allen, the pres­i­dent of the HBCU, said he was “incensed” and accused the law enforce­ment offi­cers of intim­i­da­tion and humiliation.

Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman, who is Black, said in May that deputies had found drugs on a dif­fer­ent bus that same morn­ing. The team’s char­tered bus was stopped because it was trav­el­ing in the left lane, a vio­la­tion of Georgia law, accord­ing to Bowman, who said deputies searched the bus after a drug-sniff­ing dog “alert­ed” along­side it. No one was arrest­ed or charged and the dri­ver received a warning.