SC sheriff defends traffic stop of Shaw University students, says there's 'no truth' to claims of racial profiling - WRAL News

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The sheriff said Monday that his deputies were concerned about a possibly sleepy bus driver who was failing to maintain his lane.

"I wish racism would die the ugly, cruel death it deserves. If anything we are ever doing is racist, I want to know it, and I want to fix it, and I want to never let it happen again," Wright said.

"But this case right here was nothing to do with racism. I have no idea why the president wrote the letter the way she wrote it," he continued. "I really have no idea why she won't come down here at look at the video."

Paulette Dillard, who is president of the historically-Black university, wrote a letter describing the traffic stop as "reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s — armed police, interrogating innocent Black students, conducting searches without probable cause, and blood-thirsty dogs."

Wright said that he offered to show body camera footage of the traffic stop with Dillard on Friday, but instead she called for a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Spartanburg County's policing tactics.

"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 refuted this, saying that 39 other buses similar to the one carrying Shaw University students were stopped on Interstate 85 that day, many carrying white people. No one was detained during the Shaw University bus search, Wright said, and the bus driver was cited.

The officer in the video, from Cherokee County, entered the front of the bus to talk to the driver. He also asked questions of a student at the front of the bus.

Aside from that, the officers did not interact with any Shaw University students, according to body camera released Monday.

Wright said the officers decided to have a dog sniff the students' luggage because of the frequency with which they see drugs being trafficked along Interstate 85 on Greyhound buses. Wright claims that he has seen cases where the bus driver is unaware there are drugs like cocaine stored in the luggage compartment of the bus.

"The president did not reach out to me to find out if what she's been told was truthful," he said.

"I am very disappointed that a lady of her education level would make such an uneducated statement to the press to try to get some people stirred up over this," Wright added.

The officers who conducted the traffic stop were also at Monday's press conference. Spartanburg County Sgt. Terrell Allen said that they couldn't see through the tinted windows of the bus.

"You couldn't tell if anybody else was white, African-American, Hispanic or Asian," Allen said.

In fact, deputies had no idea if anyone was on the bus aside from the driver, he said.

"We were concerned about the safety and well-being of the bus," Allen said. "We treated everybody with the utmost respect."

Allen said he and the other deputy involved in the traffic stop were unaware the students were from Shaw University and thought they were with a church group.

On top of reaching out Dillard, Wright said he reached out to the president of the West Spartanburg NAACP Rev. Eddie Parks.

Wright claims he and Parks watched the video together of the traffic stop, and Parks agreed that nothing malicious occurred.

Week-long 'annual drug interdiction operation' in South Carolina

The stop was a part of an annual drug interdiction operation in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, where law enforcement officers made hundreds of stops and confiscated cash and pounds of drugs.

Spartanburg County authorities defended their week-long operation, which turned out hundreds of traffic citations. It included 144 searches, with 65 searches using dogs.

Here’s the breakdown of the 803 people who received citations:

• White: 315
• Black: 308
• Hispanic: 125
• Other: 55

Spartanburg County deputies arrested 32 people during the operation.

The report, which analyzed traffic stop data from 2009 to 2019, shows that the rate of stops for Black drivers increased from 2016 through 2019.

Contraband was found in the cars of Black and white drivers in North Carolina at the same rate, the report says.

"While the rate at which searches are conducted varied by race/ethnicity, the rate at which contraband is found has not," the report says.

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SC sheriff defends traffic stop of Shaw University students, says there's 'no truth' to claims of racial profiling - WRAL News
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