Freedom Lawyers of America

GET YOUR CHILDREN OUT OF GOVERNMENT CONTROLLED SCHOOLS NOW !!!!
-----------------------------------------------

SIOUX FALLS, SD--The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal
class-action lawsuit on behalf of 17 Native American students - some as
young as six years old - who were terrorized when public school officials
and law enforcement officers brought in a German Shepherd to conduct a
suspicionless drug sweep of all K-12 classrooms.

"What this school administration allowed is truly shocking," said Graham
Boyd, Director of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project and lead
counsel in the case. "Officials at this school, along with law enforcement
officers, seem to be pioneering a practice of treating even the youngest
students like hardened criminals."

The case, Shenona Banks et al. v. Wagner School Board, is being filed on
behalf of 17 Native American students who attend the Wagner Community
School in rural Wagner, located near the Yankton Sioux Reservation,
two-and-a-half hours west of Sioux Falls.

The ACLU lawsuit seeks a court order barring the school and law enforcement
officials from any further dog searches when school begins on August 20.

While drug-sniffing dogs have been used in recent years to search
classrooms, Boyd said this appears to be the first reported incident of
drug-sniffing dogs being used directly on elementary school children.

"As schools look for legitimate ways to address drug and alcohol abuse, we
need to be vigilant against the war on drugs becoming a war on our youngest
children," said Boyd. "This incident could only occur in an environment
that places the war on drugs over common sense."

According to the ACLU complaint, on two separate days in May a number of
local and federal law enforcement officers led a large German Shepherd
police dog through the classrooms after the principal announced a
"lockdown" over the loudspeaker. A school official who accompanied the
police instructed the students to put their hands on their desks and avoid
petting or looking at the dog or making any sudden movements. In some
classrooms, a school official told students that any sudden movement could
cause the dog to attack.

In at least one instance, the ACLU complaint said, the dog escaped its
leash in a kindergarten class and chased students around the room. Some
students had been traumatized by previous dog attacks and one young girl
still has the scars of a previous attack on her face. Many began crying and
trembling and at least one urinated involuntarily. rinated involuntarily.
"German Shepherds are commonly used by police to attack and apprehend
dangerous criminal suspects," said Jennifer Ring, Executive Director of the
Dakotas chapter of the ACLU. "The very notion of there being a drug problem
in the kindergarten is ludicrous."

Parents of the students named in the lawsuit said that Wagner, with a
population of less than 1,700, is a hotbed of racial tensions between
Native Americans and whites. Although Native Americans make up 40 percent
of the school district's population, none serve on the Wagner School Board.

The school board approved the suspicionless search and is listed as a
defendant along with the Wagner Chief of Police and an official with the
Indian Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The ACLU complaint further charged that the containment of children within
their classrooms for several hours and the subsequent police dog sniff of
those students constitutes an "unreasonable search and seizure" and a
violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and an identical
provision of the South Dakota constitution.

James Leach of Rapid City is serving as ACLU cooperating attorney in this
case.

The complaint filed in this case is online at
http://www.aclu.org/court/volk.pdf

Student drawings of the incident can be viewed on the ACLU website at
banks_pic http://www.aclu.org/graphics/banks_pic.jpg and
zephier_pic.
http://www.aclu.org/graphics/zephier_pic.jpg