LAWSUIT CAUSES SCHOOL TO END USE OF DOGS FOR RANDOM DRUG SEARCHES

SPOKANE - Threatened with a lawsuit, a suburban Spokane school
district has agreed to stop using dogs for random drug searches in
its middle and high school, but the program could be reinstated if
judges rule it is constitutional, a superintendent said Friday.

After receiving complaints from "some students and parents" from the
Nine Mile Falls School District about the trained dogs sniffing
students' belongings, the American Civil Liberties Union and Center
for Justice prepared a lawsuit, Center for Justice lawyer John Sklut
said Friday.

A similar program began this year in the Longview School District,
with drug dogs from a private Renton-based company conducting random
searches in the middle and high schools. The Longview School Board
approved the program last spring after years of hand-wringing over
constitutional issues.

Interquest Detection Canines agreed in January 2004 to search
Lakeside High and Lakeside Middle School each at least four times a
year, looking for illegal, prescription or over-the-counter drugs,
alcohol, and tobacco.

Dogs were wrong about 85 percent of the time they indicated something
was amiss during searches, but the main issue was the students'
constitutional privacy rights, Sklut said.

Nine Mile Falls Superintendent Michael Green said the district agreed
this week to discontinue the dog searches because of the cost and
time it would take to fight the ACLU in court. He said the district
feels the use of drug dogs was proper and would reinstate their use
if state or federal judges rule on the issue's constitutionality.

"We believed we were operating with total respect to students'
constitutional rights," he said. "Never once did we randomly search a
child with a drug dog. We searched lockers, or items left in vacant
classrooms. Not one time did a dog sniff a student. We were
extremely careful about that." Doug Honig, a spokesman for the ACLU
of Washington in Seattle, said there is little case law dealing with
the issue of clearing students out of a classroom so dogs can sniff
their personal belongings.

"What Nine Mile Falls was doing, we believe, violates the students'
constitutional rights because directly sniffing students' possessions
without any reason to suspect an individual has done anything wrong
is not allowed," Honig said.

A representative of Interquest Detection Canines, a Houston-based
security company that says its dogs are used in 1,200 school
districts nationwide, did not immediately return a call for comment
from The Associated Press on Friday.

Green said the company was hired "as a way to send a message we were
serious about keeping drugs out of schools."

Nine Mile Falls, an unincorporated bedroom community just northwest
of Spokane's city limits along the Spokane River, has no greater drug
problem in its Lakeside Middle School and Lakeside High School than
any other suburban schools, Green conceded.

"Our drug problem in our schools is probably no different than drugs
at virtually any suburban school," he said. "There are kids who
choose to use illegal drugs and bring illegal drugs to school. Our
goal is to keep schools safe and drugs out of schools."

Civil liberties groups support efforts to keep schools drug-free,
Sklut said. But the method of searching students' possessions without
probable cause violates the students' rights under federal and state
constitutions, he said.

"We support Nine Mile Falls efforts to keep schools drug free, but we
have an issue of them using dogs as a tool in the fight," he said.
"Dogs are costly and inefficient and ineffective, and their
constitutionality is in question." Only one parent complained about
use of drug dogs, while "you can multiply by tens" the number of
parents and students who said they favor the program, Green said.