DALLAS SCHOOLS GO HIGH-TECH TO BATTLE DRUGS

A Device Similar To Airport Scanners Detects Tiny Traces Of
Contraband

DALLAS - It's hardly the kind of news parents and school
administrators like to hear.

Students at Spruce High School in Dallas' tough Pleasant Grove
neighborhood were smoking heroin-laced pot.

At Florence Middle School, another inner-city campus, teens were using
an out-of-the-way stairwell dubbed the "love nest" to snort cocaine
and take various designer drugs.

And at Spence Middle School, just east of downtown, one out of four
students was found to be handling either cocaine or amphetamines.

"They weren't the results we had wished for," said Donny Claxton,
spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District.

The findings, obtained through the use of an ultra-sensitive drug
"sniffing" device, prompted Dallas to become the first big-city
district in the nation to use trace detection technology to find drugs
and drug users in its halls and classrooms. It is the same high-tech
method used to detect explosives and drug smuggling at airports.

After testing the approach over the past year and finding plenty of
evidence of student drug use, DISD contracted to have all 47 of its
middle and high schools examined this school year.

"If you have handled drugs or explosives, you carry tiny, microscopic
traces on your skin, on your clothing or in your hair," explained Gary
Pfeltz, president of Trace Detection Services, the Louisiana-based
company hired to test Dallas schools.

The particles -- left on lockers, in bathrooms and around secluded
hideaways such as auditorium catwalks -- are gathered on cloth swabs.
Back at the company's lab, the swabs are run through a desktop
instrument set to detect a long list of contraband drugs.

"We're not going to stick our heads in the sand," said Claxton.
"Unlike a lot of districts, we're going to find out what is out there
and use that knowledge to try to curb it. We'll do that through more
focused education, interdiction or enforcement by authorities if we
need to."

At Coppell High School, a suburban campus where Pfeltz has been
testing for drugs for three years, administrators said the method
gives them more specifics than drug dogs and more reliability than
campus rumor mills.

"We get much more information," said Paul Lupia, the district's
director of student services.

Lupia said the district has refrained from using trace detection to
discipline individual students. Instead, officials have used it to
direct counseling and general drug education.

"I am a lot more savvy about what's out there, the trends. We know
what we have scientifically," he said.

Lupia said Coppell had not seen heroin in the schools for several
years, and "now we're seeing it again."

Checking IDs, lockersAnother suburban district, Red Oak, hired Pfeltz
two years ago to conduct a detailed scan of 1,500 high school students.

"We took their ID cards, scanned them and also checked their lockers,"
said Scott Lindsey, chief of the district's police force. The IDs are
school property, so they could be examined without invading students'
privacy, Lindsey said.

Before the tests, he said, school officials suspected the two campuses
were awash in cocaine.

The scans, however, turned up mostly marijuana, and then on only 5
percent of the students.

"It worked and it turned out to be something of a relief," said
Lindsey, adding that the school plans to test students again.

Pfeltz said some teachers at Red Oak complained that the ID collection
was too disruptive. He said he has been marketing his scans as less an
enforcement tool and more an aid to drug education and prevention.

"Under the law, schools need only reasonable suspicion to search
individual students, and this is one way they can do it," said Pfeltz.
But we found there's more interest in this for education.

"That also happens to be where the federal funds are."

HISD Uses Canine Searcher

The Houston Independent School District's
police force uses a full-time drug-sniffing dog, Rocko, to search for
weapons and drugs. The 5-year-old German shepherd can find a wide
array of drugs, spokesman Norm Uhl said.

"We increased our searches this year and are doing at least a school a
day," he said.

Pfeltz said Trace Detection Services is a two-man start-up that has
spent the past three years perfecting the testing and looking for a
market.

Pfeltz and his partner got the idea while visiting the Louisiana State
Prison in Angola.

The prison uses trace detection to screen visitors for drugs and guns
and prohibits people from entering if the test produces a strong reading.

Depending on the strength of the chemical readings, they say, they can
tell whether someone has had direct contact with a drug or whether it
is present in their environment -- in their home, for instance, where
a parent or sibling might be using.

The Dallas work, worth just under $50,000, is their first big
contract.

"The head of their police force told us all they really knew about
drug use was rumor, gossip and innuendo," Pfeltz said. The school
district's police chief, Manuel Vasquez, declined to be
interviewed.

Marijuana Popular

In preliminary tests in seven Dallas schools, trace
detection found that marijuana is the top drug of choice, followed by
cocaine, heroin, designer drugs such as Ecstasy, amphetamines and Valium.

Pfeltz said the scans also turned up a number of prescription
drugs.

The detection of drugs on auditorium catwalks, and in the "love nest"
stairwell, prompted school officials to erect lockable gates to seal
off the areas.

Pfeltz said he suspects his presence alone is something of a
deterrent, and he plays it up by wearing an official-looking black
vest and a cap marked "Drug Detection Team."

On a recent visit to Coppell, where he wiped down several sets of
lockers with a trace swab, he met Lynn and Teresa Smith, whose son
attends the school.

They asked five or six questions, then declared their support.

"We're all for it," said Lynn Smith. "It's a parent's job, but kids
spend a lot of time here and there are drugs in this school.

"We feel the responsibility falls on both sides of the fence."