CALL OFF THE POLICE DOGS

The Narragansett School Department and the town's police chief have come up
with what they think is a way to keep drugs out of the schools: send police
dogs in to do periodic searches of school lockers and classrooms.

As public policy, drug searches have all the trappings of a sure-fire hit.
They are a dramatic, tangible way to show the public you're doing something
about the drug problem. Officials can either point to the success of finding
drugs and arresting a student, or they can assure the public that the school
is free of drugs.

There's just one thing wrong with this thinking. The problem, after all, is
not keeping drugs out of school buildings. It's keeping drugs out of our
children. Sending in police dogs may seem like a good way to accomplish
that, but in fact it's just a public relations show that doesn't do anything
to keep high school students away from drugs.

What it does do is ensure that the students who are using drugs will do so
before or after school, or hide that joint in the top of their socks rather
than leave it in their locker. So while the high school's students are
safely cordoned off in another part of the building, the police dogs will be
sniffing away at nothing.

Police Chief J. David Smith seems to have brought the idea of drug searches
at the high school from his previous job in Westerly, and Dr. Pia M. Durkin,
the superintendent who came here earlier this year from Boston, is going
along with it. We would suggest that their enthusiasm is misguided.

Despite repeated drug searches in Westerly, students report about the same
amount of contact with drugs as their peers in Narragansett. According to
the 2002-03 SALT report of the state Department of Education, 35 percent of
Westerly High School students reported having been offered drugs at school
at least once; at Narragansett, 36 percent made the same claim. The same
amount of students at the two schools - 18 percent - reported "being
pressured by friends to smoke, drink alcohol or use illegal drugs."

Drug searches do not keep kids off drugs. They merely provide school
administrators with a sense of complacency. As long as they can report that
their buildings are free of drugs, they can assure parents that they are
winning the war on substance abuse. Flashy solutions like this are a great
way to avoid the day-in, day-out struggle of keeping students from making
bad choices.

If school officials want to do something about the drug problem, they should
return to what they do best - education. Narragansett already has two
programs in place that have the potential to make inroads against substance
abuse. One is the Narragansett Youth Task Force. Another is a recently
introduced high school program that provides incoming freshmen with an adult
mentor.

The best way police can assist in this effort is through their three school
resource officers.

Let the students of Narragansett High School see police officers as adults
who can keep them out of trouble instead of authority figures trying to
catch them doing something wrong.

One caring adult and a few peers who recognize the pitfalls of drug use can
do more to keep a kid off drugs than a whole army of police officers and
dogs.