ENFORCING THE RULES

"We don't do drugs," said Annette Spicuzza, assistant chief of the UW
Police Department (UWPD), sitting at her desk with a smirk on her face. As
the assistant chief, Spicuzza hears a lot about what is going on around the
campus, and sometimes off campus, regarding drug use.

"We only have jurisdiction over the campus," said Spicuzza. "Anything that
happens beyond 15th or 45th streets is under the jurisdiction of the
Seattle Police."

A ride-along with Officer Joe Sandall, a second-year officer at the UWPD,
revealed much about how the campus cops handle drug offenders.

Many officers find that the major drug problems they encounter on campus
are not caused by students, but are rather bleed-overs from the Ave.
According to Sandall, the most common drugs found among students are
marijuana and mushrooms. However, it is not uncommon for an officer to find
someone living in the bushes around campus under the influence of heroin.

Among the student population at the University, the drug problem seems to
be minimal. Most students caught on campus using drugs tend to be either in
their rooms or in some hiding spot on campus. And, believe it or not, the
UWPD know all the popular hiding spots.

"Because the campus is public property, there is not a whole lot we can do
to keep them out," said Sandall.

"When we do find students smoking marijuana, it is usually in small
amounts," said Sandall while maneuvering his police car through the back
parking lots of the north-campus dorms.

In these cases, most officers will simply report the problem to the
resident directors of the individual's dorm and ask the student to hand
over the drugs. Because the UWPD is only a precinct of the Seattle PD and a
reporting agency, it cannot file charges against anyone.

"What an officer does is file a report," said Spicuzza. "And then the
reports are sent to the Seattle PD and they decide if a charge will be filed."

While driving around campus, Sandall pointed out many spots where students
are usually caught using drugs.

"Each officer probably only catches students doing drugs about once a
week," said Sandall. "If I were to walk around looking for drug offenders,
it's pretty likely that I could find one any time of the day."

However, Sandall, like many other UWPD officers, is not on the search for
student drug offenders.

"Chances are that if a student used drugs before college and is using them
now, they will most likely use them in the future, after college," said
Sandall. "There is not a whole lot we can do about that."

The UWPD is more concerned about finding the people who are selling the
drugs to the students, and in order to get to them, this means getting to
the students first.

"Because it is not prevalent in the student body," said Officer Sandall,
"for those students who don't use drugs and never want to, chances are they
will never see it."

Of course it would be naive for anyone to say that there are not drugs at
the school, but it is not one of the UWPD's main concerns. Some of the more
common problems the UWPD faces are vehicle theft, theft from buildings and
vehicle problems.

Most recently, it has come to the attention of the UWPD that there is a
certain type of mushroom growing around the campus that has been used as a
drug. The mushroom is said to contain psilocybin, a strong hallucinogenic.
As of now, there is nothing the UWPD can do to stop students or
non-students from picking the mushrooms.

"It is a class-one drug," said Officer Sandall. "A lot of people use the
shrooms, or wavies, as they are sometimes called, to make tea or soup."

At the moment, tests are being done on the mushrooms and must be completed
before any of the officers are able to file reports against people they
find picking the fungi or using them as a drug.

But no matter how tough these UWPD officers may seem while walking around
the campus, they are here to help students make the most out of their
college experience.

"We are not here to sniff it out," said Officer Sandall. The officers are
rather here to make sure the use of drugs are not impeding on the
lifestyles of any other students.

"Kids are here to prepare themselves for the real world, whether it takes
one, four or eight years, and my job is to send them out without an arrest
on their record," said Officer Sandall. "And maybe set them straight."