Drug sweep: bad news, good news
Cape Henlopen School District recently invited uniformed and armed police officers with drug-sniffing dogs to sweep through the halls of the high school and parking lot. Delaware State Police, Milton and Dewey Beach officers used their dogs to scan lockers and the personal belongings – back packs, pocketbooks, jackets – of students who were moved out of 50 classrooms for the exercise.
District Superintendent Kevin Carson typified the sweep as a training exercise. That’s misleading. It was only a training exercise in that sweeps of large facilities like schools are scheduled by police on days set aside to train handling officers and their dogs. The sweep was a live action, in the fully occupied school, with the intent of discovering illegal substances and taking action against any students found in possession.
The bad news: even with its zero tolerance policy, the district nonetheless sensed that drugs were in the school and action was necessary. There’s no good time to have armed police officers and dogs in our schools, unless a serious incident or immediate concern warrants their presence. That the exercise was scheduled for a day when even more people were in the school – when polls were set up for the Republican presidential primary – didn’t help.
The good news: having the sweep scheduled on a training day meant more officers and dogs available. That kept disruption to a minimum. According to Delaware State Police Sgt. Paul Shavack, the sweep lasted little more than an hour. Most encouraging, however, is that in a student population of more than 1,000 almost no illegal drugs were found.
Carson said the district is determined to have a safe and drug-free high school. No sensible person will argue with that sentiment, and the drug sweep certainly punctuates the zero tolerance message.
However, internal monitoring should be the primary tool for keeping the district apprised of the drug situation. Disruptive sweeps, with the presence of dogs and guns, should be reserved for times when evidence suggests a widespread problem.
