'MISUNDERSTANDING' CLEARED UP; DRUG DOGS HEADED BACK TO SCHOOLS

One day after a Knox County school official said publicly that the
Sheriff's Office had stopped sending drug-sniffing dogs into the schools,
the sheriff said he would resume the service.

Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison called Superintendent Charles Lindsey
Thursday morning, according to schools spokesman Russ Oaks.

"The sheriff and the superintendent have spoken, and the schools will
continue to receive drug dog services," Oaks said. "He indicated there had
been a misunderstanding."

Steve Griffin, the school system's chief of security, told school board
members Wednesday evening that a representative of the Sheriff's Office
informed him after winter break that the department could no longer afford
to send the dogs into the schools.

"They said due to budget, overtime and manpower concerns that they couldn't
do it," Griffin said Wednesday, declining to name the person with whom he
spoke.

Those factors apparently are no longer a problem. The spokeswoman for the
Sheriff's Office, Martha Dooley, did not return a phone call seeking
comment Thursday.

The Sheriff's Office used to send the drug dogs into Knox County's middle
and high schools at least twice a semester, Griffin said. The dogs last
entered a school on Dec. 7, according to records maintained by the school
system, and they last found drugs - specifically, marijuana - during a fall
2004 visit.

Oaks said the schools would welcome back the dogs.

"It's absolutely a deterrent," he said. "The kids don't know the dogs are
coming on Friday the third (for example). They just know the dogs come."