‘Nothing to do with racism.’ SC sheriff rebuts Shaw president’s claims after bus search

Three weeks after South Carolina law enforcement officers searched a bus carrying 18 Shaw University students, the Spartanburg County sheriff rebutted the historically Black school’s president’s claim that the stop was racist.

At a news conference Monday, Sheriff Chuck Wright called Shaw President Paulette Dillard’s allegations “slanderous and libelous.”

“This case right now has absolutely nothing to do with racism,” Wright said. “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 such an uneducated statement to the press and try to get some people stirred up.”

Wright said he has tried three times to speak with Dillard about the incident.

Students attending conference

On Oct. 5, 18 students and two advisers of were traveling from Raleigh to Atlanta for a Center for Financial Advancement conference when Dillard has said their bus was pulled over in Spartanburg County for a minor traffic violation, The News & Observer reported.

No illegal materials were found during the search, which Wright said took place among the bags and suitcases stored in the luggage bins at the bottom of the bus.. No students were taken off the bus, he added.

The incident sparked outrage from Dillard, who called it “unfair and unjust” and reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s when Black students were intimidated and often hurt by law enforcement.

“Armed police, interrogating innocent Black students, conducting searches without probable cause and blood-thirsty dogs,” Dillard said in her statement. “It’s hard to imagine. Yet, it happened to the Shaw University community, and it is happening throughout this nation in alarming fashion. It must be stopped,” Dillard said.

“Had the students been white, I doubt this detention and search would have occurred,” Dillard told The N&O.

Wright denounced Dillard’s claims.

“The statement she made was just false,” he said.

The search was part of “Operation Rolling Thunder,” an effort by multiple law enforcement agencies to remove drugs from Spartanburg County highways.

Thirty-nine other buses were stopped among about 1,000 stops, the sheriff said. In one case, $500,000 in cash and 2 kilos (roughly 4.4 pounds) of cocaine were found, he said.

Only one drug-sniffing dog was used during the search of the Shaw students’ bus, and it was on a leash, the sheriff said. He also said the students and driver complied with the officers conducting the search.

The officer who stopped the bus saw the bus weaving around in the traffic lane, the sheriff said.

“He stopped the bus driver and tells him what he was being stopped for,” Wright said. “(The driver) never once questioned that ... the officer was very courteous to him. The bus driver (was) a very good representative of his company.”

The dog alerted the officers when it sniffed one bag but there was nothing illegal in it, Wright said.

“This bus was unmarked, with tinted windows. We had no idea to know who or what was on the bus, if anybody was on the bus,” he said.

Body camera footage

After the press conference Monday, the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office released the body camera footage of the stop as recorded by Sgts. Cody Painter and Terrell Allen.

The video shows the roughly 10-minute stop was conducted in the daylight and the bus was marked on the side, “Chauffeured Transportation.”

Painter asked the bus driver and a rider questions about where the bus was going and how many people were on the bus. The unnamed rider clarified that 20 people, excluding the driver, were on the bus and it was full of students from Shaw University in Raleigh headed to the conference.

She also said the students were 18 to 20 years old.

In the video, Painter can be heard referring to the riders as a church group after getting clarification on who they were.

The bus driver opened the bottom compartments under the bus for the search and the dog reacted to some luggage in the bus’ carrier.

In one bag the dog sniffed, the officer found Krispy Kreme donuts.

The officer can be seen in the video unzipping suitcases and searching to the bottom of the cases.

He found some allergy medicine in one suitcase.

After the search, the driver was given a warning.

‘I don’t like racism’

Wright said he waited weeks to address the incident because he was trying to meet with Dillard and called in African-American leaders, one pastor and one NAACP president, for help. The sheriff said the NAACP leader, Eddie Parks, told him “there was nothing to this.”

“If anything we’re ever doing is racist, I want to know it, I want to fix it, and I want to never let it happen again,” the sheriff said. “I have no idea why the president wrote the letter the way she wrote it.”

He went on to say that he was holding the Monday morning news conference because “I got men and women in our community that are concerned about it.”

“I’ve had white and Black people call me about this traffic stop. I’m not gonna tolerate that stuff. I don’t like racism,” Wright said. “I really want it to die the horrible, ugly death that it deserves, but we have to let it die.”

He said people who are “screaming racism” should “at least get the facts first.”

The N&O reached out to Dillard about Wright’s response. She is out of the office until Wednesday but may have a statement, according to her office.

DOJ investigation request

Hours after the incident was reported, Gov. Roy Cooper expressed “deep concern” and N.C. Public Safety officials contacted South Carolina law enforcement.

On Friday, five Congressional leaders from North Carolina sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney General asking him to review the matter.

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.”

“We reiterate support for a DOJ investigation into this incident and any systemic patterns of misconduct by the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office,” the letter read.

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.

The lawsuit resulted in a $25,000 settlement, and the Sheriff’s Office later sued the former employee.