40 years ago: Wichita students denounce recent drug raid in Lawrence

From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Mar. 3, 1971:

  • Four Wichita State University student groups had sent a telegram to Atty. Gen. Vern Miller denouncing his recent drug raid in the city of Lawrence and on the Kansas University campus. Miller had led more than 150 officers into Lawrence at 3 a.m. on a recent Friday morning, raiding over 20 residences and dormitory rooms with search warrants and arresting 33 persons on charges of sale and/or possession of narcotic drugs. Eleven of those arrested were students. Miller had been accused of “Gestapo” tactics and of political grandstanding, as well as of planting drugs and forcing men and women to stand nude while officers searched their rooms for drugs. Miller denied these allegations.
  • In an early incident of computer hacking, a 29-year-old California man had been accused of “dialing into the mechanical brain run by a rival firm and stealing information by phone.” Detectives said that the theft had come to light when the Univac system had begun spitting out data cards “without apparent reason.” The man was being charged with grand theft because the rival company claimed he had used $25,000 worth of the Univac’s time.