Dogs patrol schools for drugs and firearms

Our “four-legged friends” can be effective allies in a district’s strategy to keep schools safe, officials from DeKalb County, Ind., told conference-goers at a Saturday workshop.

Students in DeKalb County’s chapter of Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) wanted to use dogs to deter their classmates from bringing drugs and firearms to school. The sheriff department and the school boards of the county’s three districts agreed to create the SRO/K-9 program in 2007.

Saturday’s presenters included School Resource Officer Galen Wisel, who works for the sheriff’s department, and three superintendents — Kenneth Fowble of DeKalb County Central United; Dennis Stockdale of Garrett-Keyser-Butler Community Schools; and Jeffrey Stephens of DeKalb County Eastern Community Schools.

School resource officers (SROs) bring Bandit, Jake, or other members of the K-9 corps to visit the county’s three districts on a rotating basis. The dogs are well-trained, nationally certified, very friendly and not aggressive. They are happy to intermingle with the students when they are not working.

The K-9 becomes a working dog when the SRO places a collar around its neck. If the dog detects a banned item in a parking lot, locker, or other area it will simply sit down—not create a scene.

In the beginning, some students tested the program by bringing banned items to school. But by the second semester, the school started seeing a significant decrease in expulsions and suspensions for drugs and firearms.

Setting up the program cost just under $5,000, with about a quarter of the funds donated and the rest split among the districts and the sheriff’s department. The dogs’ care costs about $1,200 a year, including food, training, grooming, and veterinary visits.