Police Search of Delaware State University Team Draws Outrage

Delaware State College is a traditionally Black college, and about 70 p.c of the workforce members are Black, in response to its coach, Pamella Jenkins.

The workforce bus was returning to Delaware from a sport in Florida on the morning of April 20 when the police in Georgia stopped the bus driver, Ms. Jenkins mentioned in an interview. The motive force pulled over and off a freeway exit ramp, she mentioned, and an officer got here on board, saying the bus was wrongly driving within the left lane.

Inside 5 minutes, she mentioned, one of many pupil athletes known as consideration to officers pulling backpacks, workforce duffel baggage and different belongings out from beneath the bus — for inspection by a drug-sniffing canine. Then, two officers got here onto the bus saying a drug search in an interplay that Ms. Jenkins, who’s Black, known as “racially motivated.”

“When he introduced up narcotics canine, the very first thing he went to was marijuana, which stereotypically is related to African American individuals,” mentioned Ms. Jenkins. She added that the officer had an “accusatory tone: He wasn’t asking.”

When a pupil requested how the routine visitors cease had escalated right into a drug search, she mentioned, an officer replied that constitution buses on that part of the freeway had been identified for smuggling narcotics and folks. Although nervous and scared, Ms. Jenkins mentioned she tried to stay calm, as college students gathered close to the window to see exterior and others sat in shock. She mentioned she was anxious that one incorrect phrase might ignite the state of affairs.

The college’s pupil newspaper, The Hornet, revealed an article concerning the visitors cease by Sydney Anderson, a member of the workforce. Ms. Anderson and different workforce members didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday.

Ms. Anderson wrote within the article that the police tried to have the gamers admit they’d medicine, and she or he accused them of conducting an illegal search with out possible trigger. She mentioned the “majority of the workforce members had by no means skilled an encounter with the police, making this a traumatic incident for them.”