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The sheriff of Liberty County, Ga., denied that police officers engaged in racial profiling when they stopped a bus carrying Delaware State University women’s lacrosse players and searched their belongings.
Liberty County sheriff William Bowman during an afternoon news conference said, “This is part of our commercial interdiction detail on the interstate,” The Savannah Morning News reported. He also denied that belongings were searched, despite video evidence that they were.
Tony Allen, the president of the historically Black Delaware State, issued this statement in response: “Sheriff Bowman insists that personal items were not searched; the video clearly shows officers searching toiletries and clothes, and even cutting open a family graduation gift. Sheriff Bowman said the officers were unaware of the nature of the passengers on the bus; the audio clearly demonstrates that the officers were aware both that this was a busload of ‘schoolgirls,’ and that they did not expect to find anything other than marijuana, which the officer who entered the bus said they were not looking for. It has become abundantly more clear that this incident must be investigated by objective, external authorities. We continue to push forward toward that objective.”
Allen also released a letter from Delaware attorney general Kathleen Jennings to the U.S. Justice Department, asking it to investigate. “Based on the facts available to me—including several discussions with those impacted at Delaware State University—I’m deeply troubled by what occurred on April 20, 2022. A traffic stop (for what can charitably be called a minor infraction) led to a slew of sheriff’s deputies searching virtually every bag belonging to student athletes who were returning home from their season finale. I’m told that all the deputies were white, and almost everyone whose bags were searched is black. These students and coaches were not in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time. They hail from one of the oldest and finest HBCUs in the country. By all accounts these young women represented their school and our state with class—and they were rewarded with a questionable-at-best search through their belongings in an effort to find contraband that did not exist. Not only did the deputies find nothing illegal in the bags; they did not issue a single ticket for the alleged traffic infraction.”
