DRUG SWEEPS TO RESUME AT RICHMOND-AREA SCHOOLS

Richmond, Va. -- As middle and high school students throughout the
region return to class this week, police soon will resume their
unannounced drug sweeps of public secondary schools to keep the heat
on young offenders.

Last school year, police drug dog teams collectively conducted 121
sweeps at 64 area schools, arresting 11 students and finding drugs or
alcohol 14 times, according to figures obtained by the Richmond
Times-Dispatch.

The primary goal is to remove drugs from schools and deter students
from bringing them on campus, said Richmond police Capt. Michael
Shamus. "It's not just to go in there and make an arrest," he said.

And the deterrent factor may be working, because police rarely find
drugs, Shamus said.

"If [students] know there's going to be drug sweeps, is it worth
bringing it to school and getting caught?" he asked.

Richmond police reported the largest increase in the number of
searches from the year before, conducting 36 sweeps of 18 schools and
finding drugs three times in 2009-10. No arrests were made. By
comparison, city police conducted 23 sweeps at 12 schools during the
2008-09 school year, making no arrests and not discovering any drugs.

.In neighboring Henrico County, police conducted 54 sweeps at 23
schools and arrested two students for possession of marijuana in
2009-10. That was up a fraction from the 53 sweeps of 22 schools and
one arrest the previous school year.

"The goal is not to make a ton of arrests," Henrico police Lt. Michael
Palkovics said. "The goal is to keep the drugs out."

Chesterfield County police conducted 28 sweeps at 20 schools and made
six student arrests in 2009-10, but no comparable data were available
for 2008-09, said Chesterfield police Capt. Russ Lescault.

.The Hanover County Sheriff's Office conducted one sweep at each of
three schools and arrested two students for possession of marijuana in
2009-10. That was down from the four sweeps at four schools in the
2008-09, when 10 students were arrested for possessing small
quantities of marijuana.

Will Denius, a rising freshman at Monacan High School in Chesterfield,
said he believes the sweeps help deter some but not all students from
bringing drugs to school.

"It definitely does have a positive effect" on students who are not
already using drugs or into that kind of lifestyle, Will said. It
discourages them from "bringing drugs to school, or doing drugs in
general," he said.

But it probably has little or no effect on drug-using students, he
said.

"I don't think they are really scared" about the drug sweeps, Will
said. "Because they really don't care about anything. They just hide
it anyway. Sometimes it is good to bring [the dogs] to capture the
kids who are smoking pot in school."

Ashton Gregg, who is transitioning from Providence Middle School to
Monacan High in Chesterfield, believes the drug sweeps have little
effect -- at least on some students.

"I've known some kids that still bring drugs to school even when they
did the sweeps," Ashton said. "I don't think search dogs are really
going to scare kids from bringing drugs to school."

Jon Schoepflin, a parent of three boys, is a big believer in drug
sweeps.

"I don't know whether they work or not. But what I do know that works,
is that whenever you check behind kids and hold them accountable, they
tend to do what you want them to do," said Schoepflin, whose son is a
senior at Goochland High School and whose two stepsons graduated from
Thomas Dale High School in Chesterfield in 2009 and 2010.

"As a parent, I'm all for more random sweeps," added Schoepflin, who
teaches at Elizabeth Davis Middle School in Chester. "They can
randomly do it every day, and that's fine with me."

In Richmond and Henrico, police say they defer to school officials in
determining which schools will be swept and when those operations will
occur.

"They give us a little bit of notice and tell us what time to be
there, and we show up," Shamus said.

In addition, Richmond K-9 officers are not allowed to sweep students
for drugs. "All the students are removed from the area that we search
prior to us searching," Shamus said.

That restriction has caused some frustration among the department's
dog handlers. Shamus acknowledged that some students may feel
comfortable concealing narcotics on their person, knowing they won't
be swept.

"If you know you're not going to be searched, why not keep it on you?"
Shamus said.

However, Shamus said police must balance the intrusion of a sweep with
a school's learning environment.

"Would it be nice to search the masses?" he said. "Absolutely, you'd
probably get more [drugs]. But I think you have to look at how
conducive that would be to learning in a school environment. Do you
want to line up kids and have K-9 narcotic dogs go up and down a line
in a hallway?"

On the three occasions police found drugs in 2009-10, no arrests were
made because they were found in school common areas. "It's residue on
a bathroom floor, residue on a windowsill, but of course nobody is
there," Shamus said.

In Henrico, school officials also decide which schools will be
searched and when, but police are allowed to sweep students, Palkovics
said.

"They pick the schools, they pick the days -- we really just assist
them," Palkovics said. "It's scheduled. We don't recommend how many
they sweep, or anything like that."

School administrators decide what will be searched, Palkovics said.
"Sometimes it's a parking lot, sometimes it's a classroom. It could be
lockers, it could be students."

Chesterfield and Hanover conduct the area's most random sweeps, with
police selecting the school to be searched and the time it will occur.

"We'll just randomly pick a school and then work with the school to do
it," said Chesterfield police Maj. Karl Leonard, who added that police
give school administrators some advance warning. "We would never just
show up on their doorstep and surprise them with it."

Leonard said school officials sometimes will request a search of a
particular school based on suspicions they may have or information
they receive.

Hanover authorities take the random element a step further, providing
no advance warning before they come. "The school administrators don't
know when we're coming, so it is truly random," said sheriff's Capt.
Michael Trice. "We don't search by appointment."

However, Trice said the department tries to minimize disruptions by
examining the schools' calendars in advance and selecting days around
exams and other important school events. "We're not going to do it
during an exam period or when instructional time is fairly important,"
he said.