LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE: Police groped 900 Georgia students in intimate areas during warrantless drug search, lawsuit claims.

The human rights group, Southern Center for Human Rights, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the students against the Worth County sheriff over an April 14 incident when 40 officers came into the school with no advance notice, KTLA-TV reported.

According to the lawsuit, the officers put the school on lockdown for four hours, during which they ordered students out of the classrooms and into the hallways. Students were allegedly then forced to stand spread eagle against the lockers while officers conducted intimate searches of male and female students, including touching the breast and genital areas, KTLA reported.

The lawsuit mentions one girl in particular, using only her initials K.A., who was searched by Deputy Brandi Whiddon. The lawsuit goes into disturbing detail about how in-depth Whiddon’s search of K.A. was.

And:

In a telephone interview with WALB, Worthy County Sheriff Jeff Hobby said that the warrantless searches were legal because school administrators were present when it occurred.

It was not clarified whether or not school administrators present had agreed to the searches, however, interim Worth County Superintendent Lawrence Walters denied that the deputies had the approval to conduct the search from school administrators, nor does he condone the actions of the deputies.

“Under no circumstances did we approve touching any students,” Walters told WALB.

According to Walters, Hobby had told him in March that a search of the school was going to be conducted after spring break.

“We did not give permission but they didn’t ask for permission, he just said, the sheriff, that he was going to do it after spring break,” Walters said.

Terrible move by the sheriff’s department if true, but if Walters hadn’t given permission for the search, why did he allow it to go forward?