Drug-sniffing dogs trained in the detection of marijuana and other illegal substances will roam the halls of Simsbury High School during routine drug sweeps, according to a letter emailed to parents.
The letter, jointly written by SHS Principal Neil Sullivan and Superintendent Diane Ullman, describes the sweeps, noting that it is the administration’s intention to use the police department’s canine unit “periodically.” During the sweeps, the dogs will be brought through the hallways, bathrooms, common areas, lockers, locker rooms and parking lot while students remain in their classrooms.
http://liarcatchers.com/drugdogsweeps.html
If marijuana or other drugs are found, the student who is in possession of it will be brought to an administrative office and subjected to further questioning and search. Penalties will include suspension and the possibility of expulsion from school, according to the letter.
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“Please understand that the goal with this initiative is not to ‘catch kids,’ but rather to send a powerful message that we will not accept the presence of drugs at Simsbury High School,” Sullivan and Ullman say in the letter.
“Our ultimate intent is to maintain the integrity of the educational process and to keep students safe. The disruptions and the dangers caused by drugs being present in our school are unacceptable.”
According to the letter, police have recently seen an increase in the number of arrests of young people for possession of and possession with intent to sell marijuana. Authorities said they have also started to see the presence of K2, or “spice,” a synthetic marijuana that is legal to sell and can be bought at gas stations.
In a few cases, administrators said they have seen the use of both drugs on school grounds.
Efforts to prevent drug use within the school district have increased over the last several years in an attempt combat the rising number of arrests and uptick in drug use shown in studies across the country.
Several years ago, the district established the Simsbury Youth Partnership, a committee of parents, students, teachers, community members and administrators that provide special programs for the high school population related to good decision-making.
Administrators have also incorporated the use of passive alcohol screening devices at the door of dances and proms, and, just this year, partnered with police to place a full-time school resource officer at the high school.
There are no known statistics on the proportion of the nation’s schools to use dogs to search for drugs, said a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in a phone interview Monday. Policies on the use of police dogs in schools vary by state and by district.
Of the school districts that allow dog searches in Connecticut, some, like Simsbury, require students to remain in classrooms, while others allow both to be in the same areas. None allow dogs to search students, but rather lockers, parking lots and hallways, according to handbooks from several schools that allow drug searches.
The searches are never on a set schedule and their date is not revealed to students in advance.
The Connecticut Association of Boards of Education supports using drug dogs in schools, according Vincent A. Mustaro, the board’s senior staff associate for policy services. State law dictates that each school shall have policies pertaining to student discipline and under that policy, the board recommends another policy — search and seizure.
“It’s a policy available because a prime mission of a school is to provide safety to its students,” Mustaro said. “This is just one of a number of ways to [do so].”
The best-trained scent dogs are “really accurate” when it comes to sniffing out contraband, said Scott Beebe, director of the Connecticut K-9 Education Center. “It depends on how the drugs are packaged; there are a lot of variables, but overall [the dogs] are pretty spot on.”
However, no dog is 100 percent accurate, he said.
The use of drug-sniffing dogs raised concerns in June 2008, when an unannounced drug sweep was conducted at Canton High School the day before the senior prom. At least 15 students were taken out of class to watch armed officers comb through their belongings. A small amount of marijuana was found in the vehicle of one 17-year-old student, the senior class president at the time.
Last year, the issue made headlines again, this time at Wolcott High School. School officials, in an announcement over the school’s intercom system in October 2011, advised students to stay in their classrooms. A threatening intruder was roaming the building, they said. What appeared to be a frightening situation was actually just a search for drugs.
