Pubdate: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 Source: Huntsville Times (AL) Copyright: 2004 The Huntsville Times Contact: http://www.htimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/730 Author: Cliff Craig Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?217 (Drug-Free Zones) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/gardner.htm (Losing the War on Drugs) BAD IMAGERY The local news anchor delivered the story with the same sing-song cheer he might use with a report on a church bake sale: A valley high school was shown getting a locker-by-locker once-over by a K-9 cop and his drug-sniffing dog. The anchorman, like the school officials who arranged the search, clearly considered it a thoughtful, positive action by a concerned and caring government. I disagree. First, the search was an obvious violation of our U.S. Constitution. The cops and the principal stated no suspicion of any student doing or possessing anything illegal. More importantly, the imagery was all bad. When I see a man in uniform with a dog, I can't help but think of Hitler's henchmen and their snarling German shepherd pals unloading doomed Jews from rail cars at Auschwitz, or Police Chief "Bull" Conner's redneck goons loosing their hounds on the blacks of Birmingham. Nothing, save maybe tanks in Tienanmen Square, says "police state" quite like a police dog. I hate that our children have to see that. Oh, and detectives Copper and Fido found ... nothing. Not one crack rock, not one pot bud, not one Limbaugh Lozenge. So the exercise in civil rights-stomping served only to teach law-abiding kids that the adults who run their world don't trust them. Cliff Craig, Huntsville - --- MAP posted-by: Derek