Students allege school roundup was illegal, targeted minorities

By DEBORAH KONG
AP Minority Issues Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Three high school students and their parents filed suit against Union City school officials and police, alleging they illegally rounded up, questioned, photographed and searched students as part of an apparent gang sweep.

About 60 mostly Hispanic and Asian students were detained by school officials and police at James Logan High School last year on Feb. 22, according to the suit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California on behalf of the students.

``They have to stop harassing these children. They cannot assume that everybody is gang affiliated,'' said Angela Munoz, whose son, Victor, was questioned that day. ``Just because they're students doesn't mean they can go and take their rights away. If he can't sit and eat lunch with friends, what can the kids do?''

None of the three plaintiffs has a criminal record or is a gang member, said John Hansen, an attorney handling the suit for the ACLU.

David Pava, deputy superintendent of New Haven Unified School District, declined to comment, saying attorneys are reviewing the complaint.

The Union City Police Department is ``confident that our actions were just, appropriate and necessary,'' said Capt. Brian Foley. ``This lawsuit is a result of gang intervention meetings'' that police participated in on the Logan campus, he said.

Police will ``continue to assist the school administration in ensuring that the Logan High School campus remains a safe environment for all students,'' Foley said.

ACLU spokeswoman Emily Whitfield said the incident seems to reflect a national pattern of blacks and Hispanics being disproportionately targeted by police seeking to reduce gang activity.

``It's generally been the case that when police go after gangs, they target students based on their race and ethnicity, not any knowledge they have they're involved in a gang,'' Whitfield said. ``Good police work should always be based on suspicion and on people's actions.''

But Jessica Prentice, 16, said that's not what happened to her and her friends at Logan. Prentice, who is white, believes she was singled out by officials because she has dark hair and eyes and appears Latina, and because she was with a group of Hispanic friends.

School and police officials rounded up Prentice and others during the lunch period, according to the suit. Hispanic students were told to go to one classroom; Asians were taken to another, the suit alleges.

Officials told students to empty their pockets and, in some cases, patted them down, and Logan principal Don Montoya told them they had been rounded up because of the school's concern about gangs, the complaint says.

Prentice and others were asked to give police their names, addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, height and weight; police also took photographs, recorded distinctive characteristics and asked students if they were members of a gang, the suit says.

``It was humiliating,'' said Prentice, adding that police also asked her the type of fingernail polish she wears and whether she was in a gang and had a street nickname. ``I felt like I was in prison....What they did is totally wrong and they need to stop doing it.''

After the detentions, notes placed in students' school files inaccurately characterized them as members of street gangs, the complaint alleges. Police may also have built a gang database using the information, Hansen said.

The school had previous problems with gang fights, Hansen said.

On the morning of the incident, Montoya distributed a memo to other officials saying administrators would be ``rounding up'' students believed to be involved in gang activity to give them a ``gang intervention meeting,'' the suit alleges.

Hansen, an attorney at Nossaman, Guthner, Knox & Elliott in San Francisco, said school and police officials violated constitutional rights protecting the students from unreasonable search and seizure.

The suit seeks to prevent future questioning and searches of students without probable cause, and to force officials to erase records containing information gathered that day.

Since that day, Munoz said her son ``can't feel comfortable anywhere he goes now.''

``It was discrimination, to just go ahead and round up Latinos and round up Asians and put them in separate rooms,'' said Munoz, who is Hispanic. ``I'm hoping to change the policy, to stop these sweeps in the schools, stop taking their civil rights away.''

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)