NON-COVERAGE RAISES QUESTIONS

Here and Now

Did you know that there were three drug busts at Batesville High
School and Junior High School a couple of weeks ago?

By "drug busts" I mean three incidents in which students were caught
with small amounts of illegal substances in their possession - such
as pills and a marijuana cigarette.

I know about the busts because I talked with one of the young men
involved and then followed up with conversations with Dr. Merle
Dickerson, Superintendent of Batesville Schools; Ron Lewallen,
President of the Batesville School Board; Ronnie Coots, Principal of
Batesville High School; John Hilburn, Chief Administrator of the
Independence County Sheriff's Office; and Dan Johnson, Independence
County Sheriff.

Once I found out about these drug incidents, I had two big questions,
maybe the same that you're having right now:

I wondered why hadn't I read about them in the Guard. Was there some
kind of cover-up going on?

And, even more important, I wondered what kind of drug problem we
have out there in our schools. If the growers and mixers and dealers
had sucked in the kids just busted, how many more kids had they
victimized? My daughter Nell is out there. Are our kids safe?

After several days of phone calls and meetings, I'm glad to report
that I'm reasonably satisfied with the answers to both questions.

There does not seem to be any cover-up conspiracy at all. Certainly,
the Guard would not be party to a cover-up. The school system and the
sheriff's office don't seem to have been either. Here's why there's
been no news coverage:

According to Dickerson, the school is still in the process of dealing
with the cases. The administration has set hearings to determine
whether to follow the automatic 10-day suspensions with expulsions or
with mandatory counseling, either of which is allowed by school
policy. Dickerson says the schools themselves do not release news of
such incidents because of their desire to protect the privacy of the
minors involved and to help the kids' families help them recover.

He adds, however, that Alan Cockrill, the deputy stationed on campus
as safety resource officer, was centrally involved from the beginning
and that the schools have authority to limit the normal reporting of
the incidents to the sheriff's office, at which time they become open
to the public and to the media for reporting. In fact, Dickerson says
that "it is not in the interest of the school district to stonewall"
on drug issues. "We want the kids to have the word," he says - the
kids and their families too. The dealers are out there, there is a
danger, be alert.

So why have we not heard about the incidents through the normal
channel of police reporting? Apparently, for a sad but not surprising
reason. It was handled the way such cases are usually handled. Follow
this: first, Johnson says that, in every incident encountered by
officers in the field, the officer decides at his own discretion
whether to make an arrest and file a written report. Okay, that part
sounds fine.

But then comes the sad part. According to Hilburn, our sheriff's
deputies deal with cases of minor possession so frequently all over
the county that ordinarily they do not make arrests or write reports,
electing instead to refer minors to their parents. Hilburn adds that,
if deputies arrested all individuals they found in minor possession,
they'd overflow our jails and overwhelm our courts.

Add to that the school's need to use its discretion. According to
Coots, he and Assistant Principal David Campbell and Cockrill have to
decide in each case whether the kids are more in need of help from
their family or from the judicial system. Sometimes they have to
"plea bargain" with the kids they've found with drugs in order to
identify others.

There's no reason in this to criticize the sheriff's office or the
schools. In both cases, officials are exercising their judgment and
making the best decisions they can to promote the good of the kids,
and it's certainly true that a good family can do a lot more for a
kid than jail time. The sad thing is that drugs are so ubiquitous.
Those of us outside the drug culture have no idea how widespread the
problem is.

Which brings me back to my second big question. Are our kids safe out
at the junior high and high school? I'm glad to say that the answer
is yes - if they're not perfectly safe (who is?), they're at least
safer there than anywhere else they might go. The school board and
the administration are doing all they can to keep drugs off campus
and ultimately out of the lives of our kids. In fact, the busts
themselves are signs that new safety provisions are working.

According to Lewallen, "the safety of the students" is a chief
concern of the school board. Thus the stationing of Cockrill on
campus since the beginning of this semester. His role was central in
uncovering the drug cases and dealing with them. With no safety
resource officer, the problem may well have gone undetected.

Dickerson repeats Lewallen's assurance and adds more details. This
summer, for example, the district will complete the installation of
intercom and camera surveillance systems in the junior high and high
schools.

In addition, the school board is considering closing the high school
campus for safety reasons - to eliminate both traffic dangers and
off-campus access to drugs over the lunch hour. Coots says that a few
days before the busts, one of the kids involved had returned to
campus after lunch smelling of marijuana and had been called into the
office for a strict warning. As another possibility, the board is
also considering a drug testing program. It might, for example,
require those driving to campus to agree to submit to random testing,
which could involve from 5-15 percent of the student body each month.

With this kind of attention to safety, the kids are better off than
anywhere else they might be. I don't suppose many safety officers and
principals keep watch in our stores and parks and movie houses and
ball fields - or out on our back roads.

And it is those kids and their lives we care about. I've long known
the young man who spoke to me about his involvement. I've liked him
as long as I've known him - liked his friendliness, his openness, his
creativity. It makes me sick that the evil ones - the growers and
mixers and sellers - have gotten to him and to the other young men,
as well. I've long known his folks too - rock solid straight arrows
both, the kind of people that we all want for friends and neighbors
and fellow citizens. My heart goes out to them and indeed all the
families as they deal with trying to rescue their sons from the evil
ones and repair the damage those predators have done.

The campus drug busts put us all on notice. The evil ones are at
work, and our kids are in danger. I'm glad our Batesville School
District and Independence County Sheriff's Office are fighting them.
The good guys gotta win this one.