MORRIS DOGGEDLY SEARCHES FOR DRUGS

Canine Unit Conducts Random Sweeps in Schools

One student would leave a stash of drugs at the edge of the school parking
lot. Another student left a packet of drugs in the woods on the walk to school.

Neither student would bring their drugs into Morris Hills High School, they
told Assistant Principal Joseph Cacciaguida.

"They said they were afraid of the dogs coming into school -- they just
never knew when the dogs might be there," Cacciaguida said.

Morris County is home to the most aggressive school drug sweep campaign in
northern New Jersey. Drug-sniffing dogs are used in 14 Morris County high
schools to sweep lockers and classrooms as a front-line defense in
deterring illegal drug use. By next school year, the number will grow to 16.

Since 1996, school officials and the Morris County Prosecutor's Office have
collaborated on a program that brings the trained dogs to various high
schools three to four times each month, on average, during a school year.
By contrast, law enforcement officials in counties that neighbor Morris
County said they conduct about half a dozen sweeps a year. In at least one
case, Union County, officials have stopped sweeping local schools altogether.

At Morris Hills High School, the dogs have visited the school eight times
so far this school year, Cacciaguida said. Sometimes, school officials will
ask to have the dogs come in twice on one day or twice in one week, just to
throw the students off, he said. "We try not to keep to a schedule, because
the students are always on top of what's going on in the school,"
Cacciaguida said. "It's a way to keep those involved in using drugs
off-balance."

Though the practice yields few arrests each year in the county -- about two
or three -- police and school officials say it is an effective deterrent.

"This is not about punishment," said Chief Joseph Devine of the Morris
County Prosecutor's Office.

The mission, Devine said, is to discourage students from bringing drugs
into schools and help those who may have a drug problem to get professional
help.

The program, dubbed Operation PROCEED, or Proactive Response of Concerned
Educators Eliminating Drugs, began when school officials from one Morris
County school district approached the prosecutor's office for help to
reduce drug use in the high school before it escalated into a widespread
problem.

The school first asked for an undercover team of narcotics officers, but
the prosecutor's office didn't believe that was appropriate, said Sgt.
Michael Rogers, who oversees the PROCEED program.

Though New Jersey promoted the use of undercover narcotics agents in
schools during the 1980s, the trend fell out of practice because it was too
labor intensive and too difficult to organize.

So the Morris County Prosecutor's Office instead created the program using
canines trained by the county sheriff's department, Rogers said. At first,
school officials resisted the idea and demanded anonymity as a requirement
for participating in the program. Administrators were concerned their
school might be labeled with a drug problem if participation in the
drug-sweeping program were publicized, Rogers said.

This September, 16 of the county's 23 high schools will have signed on for
the program. Parsippany's two high schools recently asked to join for the
upcoming school year.

Mount Olive Superintendent Mark Mongon said the sweeps are one of several
resources schools use to deter drug use. The overall effect, he said, is
that students do not bring drugs onto school grounds.

"I just know we're not finding drugs in the school," Mongon said.

Cacciaguida at Morris Hills said the two students who told him they
secreted their drugs off campus weren't nabbed in a canine sweep. But their
tales proved the program is effective.

"It's not something I believe the students forget about," Cacciaguida said.
"My sense is that students feel like you never know when the dogs will be
brought in."

Though police in neighboring counties, including Sussex, Passaic, Essex,
Somerset, Bergen and Hunterdon, do use drug-sniffing dogs in local schools,
it is at only a fraction of the pace found in Morris County. Bergen County
comes closest, with as many as 10 sweeps a year, according to Bergen County
Assistant Prosecutor James Addis.

In Morris County, the program consists of three phases. First, teachers and
staff are educated about signs and symptoms of drug use, as well as how
drugs are packaged and stored. Then, the students and parents are notified
that the random sweeps will occur periodically throughout the school year.

The final phase is carrying out the sweeps. School officials may request a
sweep. Sometimes, Rogers will call the school if there's been a long lapse
since the last time.

When the dogs are brought in, the school is locked down. Students are not
permitted in the hallways and have no contact with the dog. Classrooms are
chosen at random and students are removed from the room for 10 to 15
minutes, but told to leave their belongings behind. The dog and its police
handler then enter the room, and the dog is allowed to sniff backpacks and
purses. If the dog doesn't react to anything, they continue to the next
classroom and possibly have the dog sniff lockers on the way.

If the dog reacts strongly to either a locker or a backpack, police obtain
a search warrant to search the contents. "I think it's less disruptive than
a fire drill," Rogers said.

Some are wondering, however, if authorities haven't taken the measures too far.

When the project began, the dogs sniffed only hallway lockers. Gradually,
gym lockers were added. And three years ago, officers began entering
randomly selected classrooms so the dogs could sniff backpacks and purses.

The idea was raised by administrators who believed students were carrying
the drugs with them rather than leaving them in lockers to avoid the dogs,
Rogers said.

At first, the prosecutor's office was reluctant to expand the sweeps,
Rogers said. But once they began checking classrooms, the number of arrests
rose again from none to a few, he said.

"It validated what the school administrators were saying," Rogers said.

Until this year, students who were caught with drugs generally pleaded
guilty to the charges.

This year, however, for the first time since the program started, a student
challenged the constitutionality of the sweep. In January, after a dog
reacted to a backpack, a Boonton High School student was charged with
possession four bags of marijuana with the intent to distribute. Before the
case could progress, however, the prosecutor's office dropped the charges.

Morris County Prosecutor Michael Rubbinaccio said the case was dropped
because one of the classrooms swept was not chosen at random by school
officials, as required under state guidelines, and a school official
searched the backpack while the prosecutor's office was in the process of
obtaining a search warrant to examine the bag.

Attorney Kevin G. Roe of Hackensack, who was hired to represent the
10th-grader, said he believes such sweeps are an invasion of a student's
privacy. Roe said police had no reasonable suspicion to believe that
criminal activity was going on that particular day and, therefore, had no
right to conduct such a search.

Roe said using the dogs to search for drugs is a violation of the Fourth
Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that using dogs to sniff luggage
is a "minimally intrusive" act. J.C. Salyer, a staff attorney with the New
Jersey ACLU, said he believes locker sweeps have been upheld in courts.
However, his concern centered on requiring the students to leave their
belongings behind in a classroom so a dog can sniff their purses and backpacks.

Not only is a dog sniff not considered a search, Rubbinaccio said, but the
U.S. Supreme Court also has deemed that there is a lesser expectation of
privacy in a school. So the practice is constitutional, Rubbinaccio said,
and will continue in Morris County.