COPS DEMONSTRATE CANINE DRUG SEARCH

Last week, the canine unit of the New York State police held a
narcotics-sniffing demonstration at the Cooperstown Middle/High School.

The demonstration comes after a school board decision made last June to
allow narcotics-sniffing dogs to conduct random searches at the school.

High school principal Gary Kuch said he invited the middle and high
school's student councils to witness the demonstration at the end of the
day because they are representatives of the student body.

Police officers closed special chemicals the dogs are trained to identify
in several lockers and then walked the dogs by them.

Kuch, who has been with the school for six years, said that even though the
chemical was in a can inside a plastic bag, the dogs had no trouble
identifying where the chemical was. He described it as "fascinating."

Kuch said he felt it was important that the students understood what the
police dogs would and would not do during the random searches. He wanted to
make sure students understood the dogs would only sniff around the outside
of the lockers, not search individual students or their vehicles, like some
students may have feared.

CCS Superintendent Mary Jo McPhail agreed, saying the demonstration's
purpose was to clear up any misconceptions of the new policy.

"The purpose of the demonstration was to inform the students about what's
involved," McPhail said.

"The students were very impressed," Kuch said.

No official searches have been conducted yet. Kuch said they are completely
random and it could be a year before the first search is completed. He said
the main purpose of making the random searches available is to deter the
students from bringing narcotics to school in the first place.

"We follow the code to the letter," Kuch said.

Kuch said it is legal to search a student's locker because the locker is
actually the property of the school.

As teachers, Kuch said, the faculty is responsible for keeping the students
safe from drugs and violence.

"This should need to be a drug-free school," Kuch said. "And 90 percent of
the students buy into that. We just hope the dogs go home empty handed."

McPhail agreed, saying, "School districts in New York State are designated
drug-free school zones."

CCS is one of the last schools in the county to adopt a random canine
narcotics search policy, Kuch said. Searches will use between six and eight
dogs and last around 20 minutes.

Explosive dogs were also brought to the school for a separate demonstration.