Pubdate: Wed, 29 May 2002
Source: Daily Record, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2002 The Daily Record
Contact:  http://www.dailyrecord.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/112
Author: Laura Bruno
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

MORRIS DOGGEDLY SEARCHES FOR DRUGS

Canine Unit Conducts Random Sweeps in Schools

One student would leave a stash of drugs at the edge of the school parking 
lot. Another student left a packet of drugs in the woods on the walk to school.

Neither student would bring their drugs into Morris Hills High School, they 
told Assistant Principal Joseph Cacciaguida.

"They said they were afraid of the dogs coming into school -- they just 
never knew when the dogs might be there," Cacciaguida said.

Morris County is home to the most aggressive school drug sweep campaign in 
northern New Jersey. Drug-sniffing dogs are used in 14 Morris County high 
schools to sweep lockers and classrooms as a front-line defense in 
deterring illegal drug use. By next school year, the number will grow to 16.

Since 1996, school officials and the Morris County Prosecutor's Office have 
collaborated on a program that brings the trained dogs to various high 
schools three to four times each month, on average, during a school year. 
By contrast, law enforcement officials in counties that neighbor Morris 
County said they conduct about half a dozen sweeps a year. In at least one 
case, Union County, officials have stopped sweeping local schools altogether.

At Morris Hills High School, the dogs have visited the school eight times 
so far this school year, Cacciaguida said. Sometimes, school officials will 
ask to have the dogs come in twice on one day or twice in one week, just to 
throw the students off, he said. "We try not to keep to a schedule, because 
the students are always on top of what's going on in the school," 
Cacciaguida said. "It's a way to keep those involved in using drugs 
off-balance."

Though the practice yields few arrests each year in the county -- about two 
or three -- police and school officials say it is an effective deterrent.

"This is not about punishment," said Chief Joseph Devine of the Morris 
County Prosecutor's Office.

The mission, Devine said, is to discourage students from bringing drugs 
into schools and help those who may have a drug problem to get professional 
help.

The program, dubbed Operation PROCEED, or Proactive Response of Concerned 
Educators Eliminating Drugs, began when school officials from one Morris 
County school district approached the prosecutor's office for help to 
reduce drug use in the high school before it escalated into a widespread 
problem.

The school first asked for an undercover team of narcotics officers, but 
the prosecutor's office didn't believe that was appropriate, said Sgt. 
Michael Rogers, who oversees the PROCEED program.

Though New Jersey promoted the use of undercover narcotics agents in 
schools during the 1980s, the trend fell out of practice because it was too 
labor intensive and too difficult to organize.

So the Morris County Prosecutor's Office instead created the program using 
canines trained by the county sheriff's department, Rogers said. At first, 
school officials resisted the idea and demanded anonymity as a requirement 
for participating in the program. Administrators were concerned their 
school might be labeled with a drug problem if participation in the 
drug-sweeping program were publicized, Rogers said.

This September, 16 of the county's 23 high schools will have signed on for 
the program. Parsippany's two high schools recently asked to join for the 
upcoming school year.

Mount Olive Superintendent Mark Mongon said the sweeps are one of several 
resources schools use to deter drug use. The overall effect, he said, is 
that students do not bring drugs onto school grounds.

"I just know we're not finding drugs in the school," Mongon said.

Cacciaguida at Morris Hills said the two students who told him they 
secreted their drugs off campus weren't nabbed in a canine sweep. But their 
tales proved the program is effective.

"It's not something I believe the students forget about," Cacciaguida said. 
"My sense is that students feel like you never know when the dogs will be 
brought in."

Though police in neighboring counties, including Sussex, Passaic, Essex, 
Somerset, Bergen and Hunterdon, do use drug-sniffing dogs in local schools, 
it is at only a fraction of the pace found in Morris County. Bergen County 
comes closest, with as many as 10 sweeps a year, according to Bergen County 
Assistant Prosecutor James Addis.

In Morris County, the program consists of three phases. First, teachers and 
staff are educated about signs and symptoms of drug use, as well as how 
drugs are packaged and stored. Then, the students and parents are notified 
that the random sweeps will occur periodically throughout the school year.

The final phase is carrying out the sweeps. School officials may request a 
sweep. Sometimes, Rogers will call the school if there's been a long lapse 
since the last time.

When the dogs are brought in, the school is locked down. Students are not 
permitted in the hallways and have no contact with the dog. Classrooms are 
chosen at random and students are removed from the room for 10 to 15 
minutes, but told to leave their belongings behind. The dog and its police 
handler then enter the room, and the dog is allowed to sniff backpacks and 
purses. If the dog doesn't react to anything, they continue to the next 
classroom and possibly have the dog sniff lockers on the way.

If the dog reacts strongly to either a locker or a backpack, police obtain 
a search warrant to search the contents. "I think it's less disruptive than 
a fire drill," Rogers said.

Some are wondering, however, if authorities haven't taken the measures too far.

When the project began, the dogs sniffed only hallway lockers. Gradually, 
gym lockers were added. And three years ago, officers began entering 
randomly selected classrooms so the dogs could sniff backpacks and purses.

The idea was raised by administrators who believed students were carrying 
the drugs with them rather than leaving them in lockers to avoid the dogs, 
Rogers said.

At first, the prosecutor's office was reluctant to expand the sweeps, 
Rogers said. But once they began checking classrooms, the number of arrests 
rose again from none to a few, he said.

"It validated what the school administrators were saying," Rogers said.

Until this year, students who were caught with drugs generally pleaded 
guilty to the charges.

This year, however, for the first time since the program started, a student 
challenged the constitutionality of the sweep. In January, after a dog 
reacted to a backpack, a Boonton High School student was charged with 
possession four bags of marijuana with the intent to distribute. Before the 
case could progress, however, the prosecutor's office dropped the charges.

Morris County Prosecutor Michael Rubbinaccio said the case was dropped 
because one of the classrooms swept was not chosen at random by school 
officials, as required under state guidelines, and a school official 
searched the backpack while the prosecutor's office was in the process of 
obtaining a search warrant to examine the bag.

Attorney Kevin G. Roe of Hackensack, who was hired to represent the 
10th-grader, said he believes such sweeps are an invasion of a student's 
privacy. Roe said police had no reasonable suspicion to believe that 
criminal activity was going on that particular day and, therefore, had no 
right to conduct such a search.

Roe said using the dogs to search for drugs is a violation of the Fourth 
Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that using dogs to sniff luggage 
is a "minimally intrusive" act. J.C. Salyer, a staff attorney with the New 
Jersey ACLU, said he believes locker sweeps have been upheld in courts. 
However, his concern centered on requiring the students to leave their 
belongings behind in a classroom so a dog can sniff their purses and backpacks.

Not only is a dog sniff not considered a search, Rubbinaccio said, but the 
U.S. Supreme Court also has deemed that there is a lesser expectation of 
privacy in a school. So the practice is constitutional, Rubbinaccio said, 
and will continue in Morris County.
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