DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Custer, a golden retriever trained to sniff out contraband, gives a demonstration of his skills at the Academy of the Pacific. A small bottle of gin was placed in a locker, and Custer's handler Whitney White had the dog find it.

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The dog debate

The school board struggles
to balance public safety
and individual privacy

Bringing drug-sniffing dogs into Hawaii's public schools could either make campuses safer or breed lawsuits and a false sense of security, Board of Education members were told yesterday.

The board is considering whether to allow dogs on campus to help detect alcohol, drugs and guns. The dogs would sniff students' lockers, cars and backpacks for contraband but steer clear of the students themselves because of privacy concerns.

"Students will soon learn to keep any contraband on their person rather than in their lockers or cars," Pamela Lichty, president of the Drug Policy Action Group, told the board's Committee on Special Programs. "How does this help?"

Whitney White, owner of the Hawaii franchise of Interquest Detection Canines, has contracts with two Oahu private schools and would like to work on public campuses as well. Nationally, her company has found that the amount of contraband detected on campuses drops by 70 percent in the second year of the program, she said.

"We are a detection and a deterrent service," she told board members yesterday. "We are showing a huge impact."

Mary Cochran, chairwoman of the committee, said she wants the board to develop a policy on drugs that includes an option for schools to use contraband-sniffing dogs. But board members raised various concerns, including legal questions and the possibility of false positives.

"I have real concerns about administrators being personally sued for violating rights," said Maggie Cox, the new board member from Kauai and a recently retired principal.

Board member Karen Knudsen said she was hearing conflicting opinions on how reliable dogs are in sniffing out contraband. Lichty also warned that students could plant contraband in other students' backpacks.

Glenn Tatsuno, the new head of safety and security for the Department of Education, told the committee that the discipline code does not allow for random searches and would need to be changed to allow dogs in public schools.

"Generally, school administrators have been slow to warm up to this idea," he said. "They see it as invasive. They say we're not in the police business."

The committee moved into executive session yesterday to discuss legal ramifications. If board members want to pursue it, the issue will have to come back to the committee for decision-making before going before the full board.

The Academy of the Pacific in Alewa Heights became the first Hawaii school to hire a drug-sniffing dog when it contracted with Interquest in July 2003. It was followed by Saint Louis School.

The academy's dean of students, Stan Vincent, recently described the dog as the least invasive option to keep drugs off campus, and said it seemed to be working. The golden retriever has twice signaled a find in the last school year. In the first case, a tiny bit of marijuana was found in a student's car. In the second case, no contraband was found.