ITEM PHOTO BY JIM WILSON
Capt. Thomas Cote and K-9 Dash check the hallway lockers at Pickering Middle School.
By THOMAS GRILLO
LYNN — It took Dash just minutes to sniff out Danielle Hilton’s math classroom on Tuesday to determine there were no drugs to be found.
The German shepherd from the Essex County Sheriff Department’s K-9 unit spent the morning at the Pickering Middle School checking lockers, bathrooms, and classrooms for illegal substances.
As police from Lynn, the Essex and Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department and Saugus Police Department entered the school at 10 a.m. for a surprise visit, students and faculty were confined to their rooms.
When Dash arrived with his trainer, Capt. Thomas Cote, at Room 103, students were instructed to file out. They waited for the 6-year-old pooch, who has been trained to uncover hidden drugs, to complete his work.
“We like this safety sweep because it tells the kids how serious we are about this issue,” said vice principal Maria Fenn. “Especially for some of them who are mixed up with some stuff, they will think twice before they bring it to school.”
While police did not find drugs, Fenn, School Resource Officer Robert Hogan, Stephen Emery of the city’s Drug Task Force and Oren Wright, the district’s security officer, noticed an eighth grade student pass something to a classmate in the morning gym class.
Fenn pulled them aside and one of the boys pulled out a multi-colored 3-inch folding pocket knife. The teens were taken to the office.
Wright said the boys will be suspended and possibly charged with carrying a dangerous weapon on school grounds.
“They will be summoned to court and face the penalties, which will depend on whether or not they have a record,” he said. “At the very least, they could end up with probation or community service. If the kids had never been in trouble before, they will get suspended and that goes without saying.”
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The hour-long task was repeated across town at the Breed and Thurgood Marshall middle schools by Hudson, N.H., Lynnfield, Manchester by the Sea, and Winthrop police departments, and the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office.
“It was all clear at the other schools,” Wright said.
It may seem invasive, but school districts are allowed to use drug-sniffing dogs to find contraband during unannounced, random searches, according to FindLaw, a division of Thomson Reuters, a Minn.-based firm.
Bringing a drug-sniffing dog into someone’s home requires a warrant because people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But the same cannot be said of schools.
While the Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue, federal courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of these school searches.
Thomas Grillo can be reached at [email protected].
