Footage, sheriff ’s account conflict after bus stop
Body camera footage from Georgia deputies who stopped a Delaware State University women's lacrosse team bus late last month directly contradicts Tuesday statements by the sheriff who defended the stop.
In a public address, Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman said “no personal items on the bus or person(s) were searched” during the April 20 stop. But the bodycam footage, which Delaware Online/the News Journal has obtained and made publicly available without editing, shows deputies rifling through players' backpacks and bags – something those on the bus have said for days.
Bowman also said the stop was not racial profiling because “before entering the motor coach, deputies were not aware that this school was historically Black or aware of the race of the occupants due to the height of the vehicle and tint of the windows.”
However, the footage shows bus driver Tim Jones, who is Black, exiting the bus to speak with the deputy who initially stopped the vehicle. He tells the deputy that the bus is a women's lacrosse team headed back to Delaware, though does not mention the school or that it is a historically Black university.
The charter bus with large tinted windows had no outside markings but does have a Delaware license plate.
Passengers are then told the reason for the stop, the deputy saying, “This is what we do.” He then describes how their job is to stop commercial vehicles because drugs, “large amounts of money” and children being trafficked may be on board.
He then exits, and later another deputy with a K-9 appears.
Jones is told by a deputy he was pulled over for driving in the far left of the three lanes. Jones, who said he was passing another vehicle, responds by saying he saw signs that said trucks couldn't drive in the left lane but it doesn't mention buses.
Several minutes later, more deputies arrive, one of whom has a K-9 with him. Deputies claimed the K-9 alerted them to possible narcotics, which they said allowed them to search the bus and items on it.
Body camera footage shows officers opening and looking through players' luggage.
Soon after, deputies speak to the driver and team again, and they are permitted to leave.
Gerald Griggs, president of Georgia's state NAACP chapter and a prominent Atlanta-area attorney and activist, told Delaware Online/the News Journal on Tuesday that while the initial reason for the stop was valid, “simply stopping a bus filled with African Americans and subjecting them to that (search) raises grave civil rights concerns.”
Under Georgia law, an officer who legally stops a car “can shift into a criminal investigation so long as the officer can articulate reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is occurring,” according to a 2014 opinion published by the Georgia Supreme Court.
However, without this reasonable suspicion, “the extension of an otherwise completed traffic stop in order to conduct a free-air search of a vehicle using a drug dog violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.”