Spartanburg Sheriff, attorney agree to release Operation Rolling Thunder records

An initial agreement has been reached after a lawsuit was filed two months ago to obtain documents related to the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office controversial search and seizure campaign, “Operation Rolling Thunder.” The sheriff's office agreed to produce the documents requested in the lawsuit, though in a later response either denied or did not address some of the lawsuit's major arguments.

The lawsuit against the sheriff’s office and Spartanburg County was filed on Jan. 16 by the nonprofit, public interest law firm Institute for Justice headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, on behalf of Adrianne Turner, a Traveler’s Rest resident and attorney. The complaint stated that the county improperly denied Turner's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request related to the search and seizure operation conducted by the sheriff's office.

Operation Rolling Thunder is a weeklong search and seizure operation conducted every year by the sheriff's office and other assisting agencies to remove drugs and other forms of illegal contraband off South Carolina highways.

More: Lawsuit filed for access to Spartanburg Sheriff's Operation Rolling Thunder records

The lawsuit asked for details about all searches made during Operation Rolling Thunder in 2022 from Oct. 1-7. The sheriff’s office and assisting agencies searched 144 vehicles and seized nearly $1 million according to data released by the office. In Oct. 2022, the Herald-Journal reported that one traffic stop, which yielded no seizures, led to a federal civil rights complaint.

According to a joint status update filed Feb. 15, the sheriff’s office agreed to begin producing records related to Rolling Thunder through a “phased” process, starting with currency seized during the 2022 operation.

“The parties have agreed to meet and confer in good faith on additional phases of production in relation to other responsive records, and on the scope of any appropriate redactions of information consistent with FOIA, if warranted,” the update read.

More: Sheriff Chuck Wright defends stop of Shaw University bus, says 'nothing to do' with racism

Rob Johnson, senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, told the Herald-Journal Monday afternoon that there is not a deadline, but the legal organization expects documents to be produced.

"They've indicated they're going to give us documents. They haven't actually produced anything yet," Johnson said. "But at this point, we're taking them at their word that the documents are going to come."

Joint Case Report - Rolling Thunder Feb 2024 by Chalmers Rogland on Scribd

In a response to the original complaint filed by the sheriff’s office last week, the agency acknowledged Turner’s public records response, but denied that they wholesale rejected Turner’s request. The agency also denied the lawsuit’s assertion they withheld the records on illegitimate grounds after Turner’s request was rejected due to being too “burdensome.”

A screenshot of a closed Spartanburg County records request by Turner included in the lawsuit shows that while rejecting her request, the county stated her request was "unduly burdensome" as one of three reasons for their denial. The county also claimed Turner sought records that do not exist and that her request was repetitive because it matched previous requests from the Institute for Justice.

Controversial history of 'Operation Rolling Thunder'

Johnson told the Herald-Journal that the county's Mar. 18 response, one month after the agreement, was fairly standard.

In their response, the sheriff’s office does not address much of the context the lawsuit provides about the subject of civil asset forfeiture but denied allegations of wrongdoing as applied to the agency. The lawsuit references a prior investigation by the Greenville News and Spartanburg Herald-Journal, the TAKEN series.

That 2019 investigation took a statewide look at civil asset forfeiture by South Carolina law enforcement departments. The News found that agencies in the state seized more than $17 million from 2014 to 2016.

More: TAKEN: How police departments make millions by seizing property

In its most recent operation conducted in late 2023, the sheriff's office seized over half a million dollars and searched 172 vehicles. Nine felony and four fugitive arrests were made during the entire operation.

The Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office seized nearly $3.5 million of that, more than any other agency in the state.

Turner’s request, submitted May 12, 2023, followed two similar requests from the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm conducting research for its Project on the Fourth Amendment.

Turner, an attorney who practices out of Traveler’s Rest and Columbia, declined to comment on specifics of the lawsuit and deferred to her counsel when contacted by the Herald-Journal Monday morning.

National law firm Latham & Watkins is representing Turner with support from the Institute for Justice. Greenville, South Carolina lawyer Jake Erwin is also representing Turner as local counsel.

Opinion: Spartanburg's Operation Rolling Thunder isn't how government is supposed to work

In their response to the initial complaint, the sheriff’s office denied the notion that Turner should receive relief in court.

In their denial of the FOIA request, the county did so on the grounds it, “requests the creation of a public record to the extent that it seeks a separate condensed format of information taken from incident reports.”

The lawsuit called this an “erroneous” rejection, which the county denied “as written” in their response.

Lt. Kevin Bobo, spokesperson for the sheriff's office, told the Herald-Journal over text message the agency never comments on pending litigation after a Monday afternoon voicemail was left requesting comment on the lawsuit's update.

Chalmers Rogland covers public safety for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal and USA Today Network. Reach him via email at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Herald-Journal: Agreement reached in lawsuit for SC Operation Rolling Thunder records