DON'T SHUT THE DOGS OUT

Our view: Drug dog searches can be effective - but must meet legal criteria.

Thank God for people like Hope Cunningham. The Middletown mom has had
a midlife awakening of sorts. Getting caught in a highway checkpoint
left her feeling stripped of her rights. She got mad as hell. And
when the Neshaminy School District approved a dog search policy, she
decided she wasn't gong to take it any more.

So Cunningham is on a mission to stop what she considers a violation
of students' privacy rights, including her daughter's.

Whether you agree with Cunningham - and we don't - she deserves our
gratitude. She and others like her force us to think, to reconsider.
And so we have.

We think using dogs to occasionally sniff out drugs in lockers and
students' cars can be an effective and nonintrusive way (they occur
while kids are in class) to keep drugs out of schools. And the courts
seem to be on the schools' side, ruling that the searches are legal
as long as they're based on reasonable suspicion.

It is that sticky legal point that causes us concern. A check with
one district reveals that the searches are scheduled by the company
hired to conduct them - on a random basis. So what constitutes
"reasonable suspicion?" According to a spokesman for the district,
evidence of or witnesses to drug use come to officials' attention
every week.

So it's a sort of blanket suspicion. In other words, no matter when a
search occurs, it meets the legal threshold, the official argued,
because what he described as regular evidence creates continuing
suspicion.

We're not sure that's what the courts had in mind. We are sure of
this: If the searches are effective, we'd like to see all districts
institute them. We just hope officials do so on a legal basis.