Goose Creek $1.2 million settlement

Via Dare Generation Diary.
Great news. There’s a settlement in the Goose Creek High School drug raid.

A federal judge gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a $1.2 million plan to settle lawsuits filed over a high school drug sweep where police drew their guns.
Surveillance videotapes captured the 2003 raid, in which officers ordered students to lie on the floor and used a dog to search them. Police found no drugs and no arrests were made, but the raid provoked marches and the resignation of the school’s principal.
Fifty-nine students and their families sued the Goose Creek police and the Berkeley County School District, claiming their constitutional rights were violated.

Here’s some background on the raid, and you can watch actual video footage here
A random drug search with dogs and guns drawn and students forced to lie on the floor, racial overtones to the areas searched, and a whole lot more. This was one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen.
And it came about because the drug war keeps leading people to believe that they have the right to do anything to American citizens in the name of the war on drugs. The principal and police at Goose Creek forgot that their students were human beings and Americans with rights.
If it takes a lawsuit to remind them of that fact, then so be it. And just maybe some other schools will be reminded.