Police dogs are highly trained K-9 officers reserved for the most dangerous high-schoolers

“As I stated at the beginning of this year,” began an email from the principal of Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, “if the possession, use, and distribution on campus didn’t change, I would bring drug-sniffing dogs onto campus. Today is that day.” Scott Carpenter, who is also the superintendent for the district, wasn’t kidding around when he sent the fiery e-mail out to parents, informing them about the 16 K-9 units scheduled to inspect their child’s school for illicit drugs today, Friday, April 9th. As a result of the first police raid of the high-school campus, two students were successfully apprehended and slapped with a civil violation and a $100 fine for the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.

As expected, parents have chosen one of two sides on the issue: where one found the announcement encouraging, stating the importance of “young people” understanding

The newest frontier in the "War on Drugs:" High School

boundaries, another wondered if the majority of non-drug users could be significantly affected by such barbaric police-raids. Dean Holden, father of two Lincoln-Sudbury high-schoolers, was one of the dissenters, claiming that he supported the school’s zero-tolerance drug policy, but not the involvement of drug-sniffing dogs. For the most part, however,Lincoln-Sudbury parents supported Carpenter and the inspection.

Perhaps it’s because this isn’t really an isolated occurrence; after all, the Middlesex Sheriff, James Dipaola, said that he’d been performing school drug searches for the past decade, which turned up illegal substances 10 to 15 percent of the time. With the growing trend of incidents – especially distribution incidents – it doesn’t see like Sheriff DiPaola is in it for the long haul.