GOOD FOR TOP COURT TO PROTECT STUDENTS' RIGHTS

Re: Reining in the dogs, April 26.

I'm glad the Supreme Court does not agree with police officers going
through schools with dogs to do drug searches. Law enforcement has
many more important things to do than make sure students are clean of
drugs. Not to mention the fact that they were violating the rights
these students had as citizens in this country.

I am a former student from St. Pius X High School. We used to have the
sniffer dogs come in every once in a while.

These were random searches that happened to about four classrooms
every time. Not every room was searched. If the dogs came to our
classroom, we were told to line up outside of the classroom, leave all
of our bookbags, and the dog and officer would just walk in a examine
all the bags.

Sometimes the dog would sniff something and the officer would dump the
entire contents of the bag on the floor, find nothing, and then leave
the bag on the floor with its contents spilled everywhere.

And I imagine the various police forces as well as school authorities
will now have to seriously re-assess how they are going to handle
these searches. The Supreme Court has told them they cannot violate
the rights of students.

Just because the U.S. has similar practices does not make it alright
to do. They also go above and beyond by not only having metal
detectors in a variety of schools, but there are a few schools that
have accepted letting their officers pat down and search every single
student. That is a horrible violation if I ever heard one.

To say that we have absolutely no problem with drugs in schools is
wrong. However, that does not make it OK for us to violate others'
rights just to fight the problem. That makes you just as wrong as they
are.

Kate MacRae,

Ottawa