County Schools May Go to Dogs to Fight Drugs

Officer Luis McArthur said he can smell marijuana burning every weekday at Oxnard High School.

He can tell when students go out of their way to avoid eye contact, he smells the alcohol on their breath during a conversation, and he knows that some of the school’s 3,400 students hide joints in hollowed-out highlighting pens.

“It’s overwhelming. . . . There’s just too many for me to catch,” said McArthur, an Oxnard police officer assigned to the school full time. “I see them walking in in the morning with bloodshot eyes.”

The Oxnard Union High School District had the highest number of reported alcohol and drug incidents in Ventura County last school year, according to the state Safe Schools Assessment. Oxnard’s high schools had 20.31 offenses for every 1,000 students, nearly twice the state average.

But district officials said they’ve had enough of kids coming to class under the influence. This week, the school board will consider hiring a private company to search classrooms regularly with drug-sniffing dogs.

If the plan is approved, the district would become the first in the county to make law enforcement dogs a regular sight on campus.

“It’s escalating,” said Supt. Bill Studt. “It’s obvious that it’s on the campus and the students are bringing it. And we’re going to stop it.”

Across the county at the Oak Park Unified School District, a substance-abuse task force is crafting a plan to reduce drugs on campus that may also use drug-sniffing dogs.

“People say that’s not the schools’ job,” said Oak View High School Principal Millie Andress, referring to educators’ anti-drug efforts. “You know what? They’re right. But nobody’s doing the job.”

At Oxnard High, students from two classrooms--selected at random each school day--are lined up for a drug and weapons search. Administrators also keep a close eye on students to determine who may be selling or using drugs.

“The biggest problem we have on campus is drugs,” McArthur said. “It’s not uncommon for a teacher to send a student to my office because he is under the influence or drunk.”

Alcohol and marijuana are the most prevalent, but the painkiller Vicodin is also becoming increasingly popular, he said.

Student bathrooms are now locked during the morning nutrition break, so students can’t sneak a toke, and officials watch for students who may be carrying alcohol-spiked sodas in twist-top bottles to campus, officials said.

“They just want to get a little high,” said Rafael Gonzales, the district’s director of instruction support services. “The kids were stressing: ‘It’s not to get drunk; it’s just to socialize.’ ”

Such an attitude has Gonzales and other Oxnard administrators worried. And, they maintain, if a drug-sniffing dog program can assist in cleaning up campuses, it should be considered.

Plan to Be Outlined Before School Board

District staff is expected to present a report to trustees today outlining how the dogs would be used. If the board favors the idea, a formal proposal will be brought back within a month for a final vote.

“As far as I’m personally concerned, I’m very much leaning toward the canines,” Gonzales said. “I think it would help.”

By contrast, Oak Park Unified has a minimal amount of reported drug activity.

With the exception of Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley Elementary School District, Oak Park had the county’s lowest number of reported drug or alcohol offenses last year, according to the state Safe Schools Assessment. For every 1,000 students, 0.31 were caught with drugs or alcohol.

Despite the low numbers, the east county school district has established a substance-abuse task force. Its mission--to design a plan to further prevent drug use and to rehabilitate users.

“We don’t have indicators that say we need something now, but we don’t want it to get to that point,” Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt said. “We hear from the kids that there are problems.”

One of the companies Oak Park and Oxnard may hire is Interquest Detection Canines, a Houston-based concern that has placed dog teams in schools and offices for 20 years and has contracts with 130 school districts in California.

The company trains Labrador and golden retrievers to sniff out almost anything officials don’t want in their classrooms, including gunpowder. One of the company’s dogs, for example, can pick up the scent of beer on a jacket that had been spilled days before.

Interquest employees wear civilian clothes when they visit a school. Students often stop to pet the friendly pup accompanying them.

“Everything we’ve read and heard is that they are nonaggressive detection,” Gonzales said. “We are not out to catch people. We would like to deter people from bringing items on campus that they shouldn’t have.”

But having such dogs on campus violates a student’s 4th Amendment rights, said Graham Boyd of the American Civil Liberties Union. The civil rights group has long opposed using dogs in schools to locate drugs, contending that the practice turns a learning environment into a police-state atmosphere.

“I think that the practitioners of the war on drugs are often violating rights without actually accomplishing the goals they set,” said Boyd, who works for the ACLU’s drug policy litigation project in New York. “Using the dogs is saying to the students, ‘We’re watching you. We’re going to violate your rights and do anything we can to punish you.’ ”

Students do have privacy rights, agrees county Supt. of Schools Charles Weis. But schools have a higher responsibility to keep all students safe.

“Sometimes you give up a few liberties as a child while you are at home and while you are in school,” Weis said. “The public shouldn’t see this as the first step toward a totalitarian state.”

Company Reports Few Complaints

Across the Los Angeles County line at the Las Virgenes Unified School District, which has a contract with Interquest, officials said they haven’t had many complaints about privacy concerns and believe the dogs have been a deterrent.

“It’s been really successful,” said Linda Cohen, coordinator of special programs for the district, which oversees schools in Calabasas and Agoura Hills. “I think that students are very well aware of the canines. It’s not threatening or frightening.”

Cohen calls the program a success because the number of times a dog has alerted administrators to a “problem” locker or backpack dropped the semester after the program was implemented and has remained low.

A districtwide survey four years ago found Las Virgenes was just above the state average in alcohol and drug use. That was seen as a red flag--a warning sign the something needed to be done.

“Many [students] had tried drugs and alcohol. And some, especially in the upper grades, used on a regular basis,” Cohen said.

The district spent a year educating parents and community members about what the dogs would do while patrolling the district’s five secondary schools. The response was positive, and Cohen has received only two phone calls from angry parents during the three-year program.

An Interquest employee and trained dog make a surprise visit to each campus once or twice a month. No one--not even the principal or district office--knows in advance when a search will be conducted.

Students maintain most of their constitutional rights, although school officials are probably justified in searching students’ backpacks in the classrooms, said Joerg Knipprath, a constitutional law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

“At the same time, the students’ 4th Amendment rights are not as extensive as they would be outside the school setting,” Knipprath said.

That’s because school officials often have more rights to search on campus than police would have in someone’s home or on the street, he said.

Simi Valley parent Nan Mostacciuolo is still troubled by the idea of searching student lockers and property at school.

She was so upset when her district ran a pilot program with drug-sniffing dogs three years ago that she gave her children hemp key chains as a form of protest.

“There’s no question that drugs are a problem, but taking away any rights is not the answer to any problem,” said Mostacciuolo, who has three children in Simi Valley schools. “It’s ironic that a place where we teach our children about the Constitution is also a place where we take away those rights.”

Sheriff’s K-9 Units Sometimes Requested

But Simi Valley Unified School District officials believe that occasionally bringing dogs on campus makes a positive difference. It can’t be a school district’s only line of defense against drugs--but it helps, said Kathryn Scroggin, assistant superintendent of educational services.

“From the school perspective, it can’t do anything but act as an additional deterrent for some students who might be considering bringing something to school,” Scroggin said.

Simi Valley, like a few other districts in the county, will occasionally use K-9 units from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which will send a police dog team to any school that requests one. But Capt. Kenton Rainey said his department usually receives no more than two requests a year.

“We’re not there from an enforcement standpoint. It’s training for us,” Rainey said. “If they find something, it’s incumbent on them to take it to the next level.”

The consequences for students can range from suspension or expulsion to police arrest, depending on the severity of the crime.

But Drug Abuse Resistance Education programs and other prevention efforts are still essential tools educators use to encourage kids to stay off drugs, said Sheriff’s Det. Alberto Miramontes, who taught DARE programs in Moorpark schools for three years.

Anti-drug lessons give students a chance to talk and learn about issues they may not be discussing anywhere else, Miramontes said.

“Kids are growing up a lot faster,” he said. “Drugs and sex are not the issues parents bring up at the table.”

Andress at Oak View High agrees that prevention programs can be effective but expressed concern about the increase in drug use in recent years.

That is why she is helping to formulate the anti-drug strategy for her district.

“I don’t want it to get to the point where kids are falling out of chairs before we do anything about it,” she said.