Days after Delaware State University’s student newspaper published a video and news article about an April traffic stop by Georgia deputies that many have since decried as racial profiling, the county sheriff denied any wrongdoing by his deputies.
In a public address Tuesday afternoon in Hinesville, Georgia – a small, southeastern Georgia city south of Savannah – Liberty County Sheriff William Bowman defended the stop, which occurred on April 20.
He said after speaking with deputies and reviewing video and other aspects of the incident, he does “not believe any racial profiling took place.”
“Before entering the motorcoach, the deputies were not aware that this school was historically Black or aware of the race or the occupants due to the height of the vehicle and tint of the windows,” Bowman said.
“As a veteran, a former Georgia state trooper and the sheriff for this department, I do not exercise racial profiling, allow racial profiling or encourage racial profiling.”
But many who were on the bus during the stop felt otherwise, saying there was no reason for deputies to search their belongings after stopping the bus for a minor traffic infraction. It was initially pulled over for traveling in the left lane, which certain large vehicles are not allowed to do in Georgia. The driver was not cited.
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Bowman said Tuesday that “no personal items on the bus or person(s) were searched” – negating the accounts of multiple people on the bus at the time.
He also refused to take questions from reporters after reading an approximately six-minute statement.
What happened
The April incident unfolded relatively quickly, after the bus carrying Delaware State University’s women’s lacrosse team was stopped on I-95 north in Liberty County. Bus driver Tim Jones was told he was improperly traveling in the left lane.
After Jones pulled over, deputies used a K-9 to circle the outside of the bus. They claimed the dog alerted them to narcotics, which they said gave them reason to search the bus.
Video taken by DSU player Saniya Craft shows a deputy who boarded the bus saying, “If there is anything in y’all’s luggage, we’re probably gonna find it, OK? I’m not looking for a little bit of marijuana, but I’m pretty sure you guys’ chaperones are probably gonna be disappointed in you if we find any.”
By that time, Liberty County Sheriff’s Office deputies had begun removing players’ bags from the vehicle’s cargo bay after asking Jones to open it. Deputies knew those on board were on a lacrosse team.
“If there is something in there that’s questionable,” the deputy speaking on the bus said, “please tell me now because if we find it, guess what? We’re not gonna be able to help you.”
Outcry was swift following the video’s publication, with Delaware elected officials, university personnel, students and community members saying they are angered by the stop. DSU President Tony Allen said in a Monday letter that he is “incensed.”
Pamella Jenkins, who coaches the team, said the incident was “very traumatizing” and credited the lacrosse players for staying “composed.”
She said when team members saw their luggage being removed before a deputy had begun his explanation, they were stunned.
“The infuriating thing was the assumption of guilt on their (deputies’) behalf,” Jenkins said. “That was what made me so upset because I trust my girls.”
“One of my student-athletes asked them, ‘How did we go from a routine traffic stop to narcotics-sniffing dogs going through our belongings?’” Jenkins said. “The police officer said that on this stretch of highway there are a lot of buses that are smuggling people and narcotics and they have to be diligent.’”
On Tuesday, Bowman acknowledged some of the concerns, saying in “this current environment, even a traffic stop can be alarming to citizens, especially African-Americans.”
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He said that is “why we make an effort to have a diverse department and hire people who believe in community policing and respect for all individuals.”
However, all deputies on and outside the bus were white, photos and video from the incident show. Most, but not all, of the players and coaches on the bus were Black.
Delaware State University did not provide comment about the sheriff’s comments, but said previously it has “reached out to Georgia Law Enforcement and are exploring options for recourse – legal and otherwise – available to our student-athletes, our coaches, and the university.”
‘Grave civil rights concerns’
While activists locally and in Georgia echoed the frustrations of Delaware officials and students, they also said they’re not surprised by the incident – an all too common occurrence for people of color, especially Black citizens, they said.
Gerald Griggs, president of Georgia’s state NAACP chapter and a prominent Atlanta-area attorney and activist, said he wants “some transparency” from the sheriff’s office, including an explanation for why the K-9 was brought out.
Sheriff Bowman did not offer any details Tuesday as to why the police dog was needed.
“Simply stopping a bus filled with African Americans and subjecting them to that (search) raises grave civil rights concerns,” Griggs said.
“We’ve had many of these incidents in which passengers and vehicles have been stopped under the pretext of some type of traffic violation and then subjected to prolonged searches on the side of the road.”
The stop and search lasted 30 to 45 minutes, Jenkins estimated.
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Griggs told Delaware Online/The News Journal that based on what he’s seen from the DSU video and read in news articles, he believes deputies overstepped.
“The actual search of the baggage and running the dog all up on the bus, they’re going to need something (more) to do that,” he said. “And I have some serious concerns about whether they did.”
ACLU of Delaware Staff Attorney Dwayne Bensing said while he cannot speak to Georgia law, in Delaware, police cannot simply stop a person because they believe that person is involved in “illegal activities.”
While officers can stop drivers for any traffic infraction and order them out of the car, they must provide reasonable and articulable suspicion – a requirement just below the legal standard of probable cause – to extend the stop beyond the initial reason.
Michael Modica, a Wilmington attorney, previously told Delaware Online/The News Journal that often doesn’t prevent officers from doing it and he’s fought instances where police have overstepped.
Several years ago, a Newport police corporal stopped one of Modica’s clients for playing his radio too loud. Despite neither seeing nor smelling drugs, and the man telling him there was nothing in the car, the corporal, who is a member of two federal law enforcement task forces, called for a drug-sniffing K-9.
In a later hearing, the corporal said he saw the man had two cellphones, believed he was nervous because he “would briefly make eye contact and chewed his gum increasingly rapidly,” was taking an indirect route from Wilmington to Elsmere and had prior criminal history.
This, he said, gave him reasonable suspicion to call the police dog. A Delaware Superior Court judge disagreed and ruled that the corporal’s reasoning was not enough to allow him to search the car.
Both Griggs and Bensing said stops like the one on DSU’s bus happen all too often to people of color, and sometimes with fatal consequences.
According to a Washington Post database of police shootings, in 2015, more than 100 people were shot and killed by police following a traffic stop. One in 3 of them were Black, “making the roadside interaction one of the most common precursors to a fatal police shooting of a Black person in 2015.”
Traffic stops are the most frequent interaction the public has with police. And national and state data show that Black drivers – men, especially – are stopped more often than white drivers.
Griggs applauded the lacrosse players’ demeanor during the search, saying that remaining “calm and composed” kept the stop from escalating.
“It could have gone a lot worse and they would have had a real, real serious issue,” he said. “Now we just have a serious issue, and that’s because of the students’ response.”
How the story broke
The incident did not come to light publicly until a story appeared in DSU’s student publication The Hornet Newspaper and its website thehornetonline.com late last week. It was written by Sydney Anderson, a sophomore lacrosse player who was on the bus.
Delaware State University officials had been conducting their own “extremely meticulous” examination of what happened and what steps to take but were doing so at a deliberate pace, school spokesman Steve Newton said, because there were no arrests and planning for Saturday’s annual commencement demanded attention.
That included several meetings with the lacrosse team and discussions with the Delaware Department of Homeland Security. DSU officials were not aware, however, of the existence of video from the incident until the story appeared on the school newspaper’s website.
That’s when they realized the traffic stop was by Liberty County Sheriff’s Office deputies and not Georgia State Patrol.
After the incident was made public, the ACLU of Delaware reached out to its Georgia chapter because traffic stop laws are “very state specific.” Bensing said Delaware’s ACLU “would certainly be open to assisting” any action Georgia’s chapter takes.
Griggs, of the Georgia NAACP, said that as of Tuesday afternoon, his organization has not been contacted by anyone from Delaware or DSU. He echoed Bensing though, saying he hopes those who were impacted reach out because, “we’re very concerned.”
“It was not fair,” he said, “and more than just a conversation, there needs to be civil rights attorneys involved in litigating this kind of thing.”
Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes_ Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.
