SEARCH FOR DRUGS UPSETS STUDENTS

Portsmouth High Scoured By Dogs

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Portsmouth High School student Sarah Dicks says
she felt violated when her modern European history class was
interrupted recently so police dogs could sniff student backpacks for
illicit drugs.

"They announced that no one could leave the rooms at all, not even to
go to the bathroom," said Dicks, 18.

"Someone came by and announced they were doing a drug search, and we
should put our backpacks in the hall. Then we came back to class and
waited."

Portsmouth police said the search by half a dozen dogs from Portsmouth
and several neighboring police departments lasted little more than a
half-hour, in the halls only, and was more like a routine airport
inspection by narcotics dogs.

Dicks doesn't buy it.

"I just felt it was wrong -- a violation of my privacy. This is my
personal stuff," she said. "I am not a suspect for using drugs. Why
should they search my bags?"

Instead of surprise searches by drug dogs, Dicks recommends closer
monitoring of students suspected of using drugs. "Are they
disappearing from class and coming back stoned or wasted? Then you
deal with that student -- not everyone."

About half a dozen drug-detecting dogs were deployed to sniff out
drugs at the high school, in a cooperative effort between the
Portsmouth police and school administration.

Last spring, Portsmouth parent Bob Montville launched a drive to beef
up the school's drug and alcohol policies after a former Portsmouth
High School basketball coach went public, complaining that a drug deal
he had witnessed on high school grounds between two high school
athletes two years earlier went unpunished.

Montville, a father of two middle-schoolers, organized a "drug
summit." He started a website, www.seacoastparents.com. He and other
parents called for the use of drug dogs.

"We're happy that there is going to be a continuing presence to let
people know they're not going to tolerate drugs on school grounds,"
said Montville.

Portsmouth School Board member Charlie Vaughn said the dogs show
students the school is serious about drugs.

"It shows the administration is serious that kids are there to be
educated, not smoke a little pot," said Vaughn. The proof that the
tactic worked, said Vaughn, is that "they didn't find anything."

But some parents find the tactic too confrontational.

"I don't like those dogs at all," said Sarah O'Callaghan, the mother
of a senior. "If you begin to run high schools like you'd run a
prison, the kids are going to start acting like prisoners.

"I do think there's a drug problem at the high school," O'Callaghan
said, "but I think the way to deal with it is to create an
environment based on trust with adults rather than on
confrontation."

The search for drugs at Portsmouth High occurs amid reports that drug
use among New Hampshire teenagers is rising.

A Dec. 1 report by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies
found that the juvenile arrest rate for drug crimes in New Hampshire
is ninth highest in the country, having risen by 18 percent from 2000
to 2002.

The report, entitled "Teen Drug Use and Juvenile Crime in N.H.: High
and Rising," cited a 2002 survey by the federal Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration, that said 12 percent of New
Hampshire teenagers, or about 13,600, have serious alcohol or drug
problems; and some 7,900 teenagers, or 7 percent of all youths -- need
drug treatment and are not getting it.

Meanwhile, Portsmouth High School officials reported 40 drug and
alcohol violations on record for 2002-2003.

Portsmouth police Captain David Ferland said the drug dog search
lasted less than one school period, during which the dogs checked out
650 school bags, representing two-thirds of the high school's 1,100
students, and some 250 lockers.

Ferland, former chief trainer at the New Hampshire Police K-9 Academy,
said most of the dogs were narcotics dogs trained to sniff drugs with
olfactory organs 500 to 2,500 times more acute than human noses.

"Our primary motivation is to provide a drug-free educational
environment for all the students that go to Portsmouth High School,"
said Ferland. "I think the dogs are a very limited intrusion. . . .
School officials are allowed to go through every single pack, which I
think would be much more intrusive."

Most of the dogs there were not trained to catch crooks, said Ferland.
"These were German shepherds, but also labs and golden retrievers
trained to sniff narcotics. They're the dogs you see at airports."

Still several students oppose the tactic.

"It's not like people are shooting up heroin in the bathrooms," said
senior Lottie Borkland, 17, of Newington.

"We're not criminals," said senior Emily Stone, 17, of Portsmouth.
"This is a school."