Shaw University files federal complaint after student bus stopped and searched

Shaw University has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, asking the federal agency to review a traffic stop and search of a bus that was carrying students to an academic conference in October.

President Paulette Dillard said students from the historically Black university in Raleigh had their civil rights violated when the bus carrying 18 students and two administrators was pulled over in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, for a minor traffic violation on Oct. 5.

“Let’s be clear,” Dillard said at a news conference Monday. “Racism is about power and systems, and just because there isn’t a knee on someone’s neck doesn’t mean that no harm is being done.”

The university’s complaint states, among other things, that an alleged, minor traffic-lane violation was insufficient reason to justify a search for drugs.

The complaint, filed for the university by attorney Daniel T. Blue III, asks for a federal review of the traffic stop and search. It further alleges the students’ right to privacy was violated and that “Operation Rolling Thunder,” the larger operation the stop was part of, disproportionately affected Black drivers.

“It begs the question whether every vehicle stopped for a lane violation is also searched for drugs by dogs,” Dillard said. “Who gets searched and why?”

Body camera footage released by the sheriff’s office showed Sgt. Cody Painter asking the bus driver and another unidentified person questions about their trip. He then proceeded to search the luggage on the bus. No drugs or illegal items were found, although the drug-sniffing dog alerted on a bag that was found to contain doughnuts.

Dillard was outraged by the incident calling it racial profiling.

Shaw University complaint by Mark Schultz on Scribd

‘The real issue is why’

“The real issue is why and how a minor traffic violation immediately turned into a drug search,” Dillard said. “We need to ask the question, why the officer onboard the bus immediately asked the students if they were transporting some type of illegal or illicit content within their bags?”

She said this situation was a teachable moment and was a reminder that the “fight for civil rights is still an ongoing necessity.”

Mariah Williams, president of the university’s Student Government Association, was not on the October trip but spoke about how the incident affected her classmates.

“My classmates and I may be young, but we are not naive,” Williams said at the news conference. “We understand that some of the struggles from the past are still here in the present. We are also keenly aware of the destructive and damaging effect that young people experience when people in positions of authority dismiss, disrespect and assume the worst about us.”

Williams said it was difficult to understand why a routine traffic stop led to the searching of her classmates’ luggage.

“Situations like this one can change how we see ourselves, how we see each other, and how we see the world,” she said. “These situations have the ability to erode public trust in established institutions that are supposed to protect and serve.”

In 2020, Shaw University established its Center for Racial and Social Justice in response to the summer of protests after the murder of George Floyd. The center aims to “educate the public and to demand accountability,” Dillard said. “That is what we are doing here today.”

“We are obligated and committed to stand up and speak up for those who are historically overlooked and underestimated,” she said. “The laws of this nation should protect them too.”

The complaint filed by the school requests an “expedited and independent review of the unfounded search” and an investigation of the Spartanburg County and Cherokee County sheriffs’ offices “for civil rights violations,” according to Blue.

‘Nothing to do with racism’

On Oct. 31, Sheriff Chuck Wright of Spartanburg County held a press conference rebutting Dillard’s claims, saying the stop and search had “nothing to do with racism.”

“I don’t have a problem when someone points out a problem with our department. I’m very, very, very disappointed that a lady of her education level would make such an uneducated statement to the press and try to get some people stirred up,” Wright said.

The press conference came three days after North Carolina congressional leaders sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking for an investigation into the sheriff’s office.

Democrats Deborah Ross, David Price, Alma Adams, G.K. Butterfield and Kathy Manning all signed the letter saying, “the students were left unnerved, confused, and humiliated. We are deeply troubled by this unfounded search of Shaw students.”

The letter also made note of a 2014 lawsuit against Wright and the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office by a former employee who claimed the office used racial slurs and made him train under an officer who may have been part of the Ku Klux Klan, as reported by WYFF in Greenville, South Carolina.

Shaw University officials said they are now leaving the matter in federal hands.

Mark Schultz contributed to this report.