SHIVER TARGETS DRUGS, SECURITY

Metal Detectors, Canines To Return For 'Safety' Issues

Metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs will soon be back at some Birmingham
schools.

Interim Superintendent Wayman Shiver Jr. has told Birmingham school board
members that he intends to soon reinstitute the routine use of detectors
and search dogs at primarily the city's high and middle schools.

Shiver did not elaborate on why he wants to step up security measures other
than to say he has become increasingly concerned about safety issues and
the behavior of students.

"We need to do this to deal with the safety and security issues of our
teachers and students," Shiver said of the move to use detectors and dogs.

Most of the school board's nine members appear to support the move to
ratchet up security and discipline at schools.

"Let's get out of the schools what does not need to be there. I think it's
a good move," said board member Willie J. Maye Jr.

The board's vice president, Dannetta K. Thornton Owens, has long been
concerned about what she sees as safety and discipline problems in city
schools.

Recently Owens addressed the system's principals and strongly criticized
many of them as ineffective in a number of areas, including failing to
enforce discipline at the schools.

"Some of our schools, when you visit them you see the children literally
hanging out of the windows," Owens said. "You go inside and you see some of
the children doing flips in the school. When you ask principals about this,
all you see in their eyes are hopeless looks, not knowing what to do."

Birmingham police patrol most of the city's high schools and some middle
schools. Beginning in the early 1990s, metal detectors were an everyday
fixture at the city's high and middle schools as the system grappled with
drug problems and violence.

But regular use of the detectors and drug dogs waned in recent years,
though both have continued to be used from time to time.

Across the Birmingham-Hoover metro area, most school systems occasionally
use drug-sniffing dogs during unannounced inspections of students lockers
and parking lots. Most districts do not routinely employ metal detectors.