Pubdate: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 Source: South County Independent (RI) Copyright: 2003 South County Independent Contact: http://www.scindependent.com/ CALL OFF THE POLICE DOGS The Narragansett School Department and the town's police chief have come up with what they think is a way to keep drugs out of the schools: send police dogs in to do periodic searches of school lockers and classrooms. As public policy, drug searches have all the trappings of a sure-fire hit. They are a dramatic, tangible way to show the public you're doing something about the drug problem. Officials can either point to the success of finding drugs and arresting a student, or they can assure the public that the school is free of drugs. There's just one thing wrong with this thinking. The problem, after all, is not keeping drugs out of school buildings. It's keeping drugs out of our children. Sending in police dogs may seem like a good way to accomplish that, but in fact it's just a public relations show that doesn't do anything to keep high school students away from drugs. What it does do is ensure that the students who are using drugs will do so before or after school, or hide that joint in the top of their socks rather than leave it in their locker. So while the high school's students are safely cordoned off in another part of the building, the police dogs will be sniffing away at nothing. Police Chief J. David Smith seems to have brought the idea of drug searches at the high school from his previous job in Westerly, and Dr. Pia M. Durkin, the superintendent who came here earlier this year from Boston, is going along with it. We would suggest that their enthusiasm is misguided. Despite repeated drug searches in Westerly, students report about the same amount of contact with drugs as their peers in Narragansett. According to the 2002-03 SALT report of the state Department of Education, 35 percent of Westerly High School students reported having been offered drugs at school at least once; at Narragansett, 36 percent made the same claim. The same amount of students at the two schools - 18 percent - reported "being pressured by friends to smoke, drink alcohol or use illegal drugs." Drug searches do not keep kids off drugs. They merely provide school administrators with a sense of complacency. As long as they can report that their buildings are free of drugs, they can assure parents that they are winning the war on substance abuse. Flashy solutions like this are a great way to avoid the day-in, day-out struggle of keeping students from making bad choices. If school officials want to do something about the drug problem, they should return to what they do best - education. Narragansett already has two programs in place that have the potential to make inroads against substance abuse. One is the Narragansett Youth Task Force. Another is a recently introduced high school program that provides incoming freshmen with an adult mentor. The best way police can assist in this effort is through their three school resource officers. Let the students of Narragansett High School see police officers as adults who can keep them out of trouble instead of authority figures trying to catch them doing something wrong. One caring adult and a few peers who recognize the pitfalls of drug use can do more to keep a kid off drugs than a whole army of police officers and dogs. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh