Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jan 2002
Source: Bucks County Courier Times (PA)
Copyright: 2002 Calkins Newspapers. Inc.
Contact: http://www.phillyburbs.com/feedback/content_cti.shtml
Website: http://www.phillyburbs.com/couriertimes/index.shtml
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1026

DON'T SHUT THE DOGS OUT

Our view: Drug dog searches can be effective - but must meet legal criteria.

Thank God for people like Hope Cunningham. The Middletown mom has had 
a midlife awakening of sorts. Getting caught in a highway checkpoint 
left her feeling stripped of her rights. She got mad as hell. And 
when the Neshaminy School District approved a dog search policy, she 
decided she wasn't gong to take it any more.

So Cunningham is on a mission to stop what she considers a violation 
of students' privacy rights, including her daughter's.

Whether you agree with Cunningham - and we don't - she deserves our 
gratitude. She and others like her force us to think, to reconsider. 
And so we have.

We think using dogs to occasionally sniff out drugs in lockers and 
students' cars can be an effective and nonintrusive way (they occur 
while kids are in class) to keep drugs out of schools. And the courts 
seem to be on the schools' side, ruling that the searches are legal 
as long as they're based on reasonable suspicion.

It is that sticky legal point that causes us concern. A check with 
one district reveals that the searches are scheduled by the company 
hired to conduct them - on a random basis. So what constitutes 
"reasonable suspicion?" According to a spokesman for the district, 
evidence of or witnesses to drug use come to officials' attention 
every week.

So it's a sort of blanket suspicion. In other words, no matter when a 
search occurs, it meets the legal threshold, the official argued, 
because what he described as regular evidence creates continuing 
suspicion.

We're not sure that's what the courts had in mind. We are sure of 
this: If the searches are effective, we'd like to see all districts 
institute them. We just hope officials do so on a legal basis.
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MAP posted-by: Josh