Drugs dogs in school!

[HappilyHadesBound]

For background, my daughter is disabled and has a lot of medication as a result.

Apparently there is a significant problem in the town my children attend school with cocaine being used and sold by teenagers. As a result, the school today (and without warning to parents) brought in the police with drugs dogs. They did whole year assemblies and during hers my daughter was picked out by the dog.

It was all sorted out with the policeman afterwards with no issue, she had some Co-codamol with her which is prescribed by the doctor for her, and the staff are happy too.

The problem is that her entire year group of more than 300 kids (as well as staff) witnessed this! I'm devastated for her. She gets bullied already for so many reasons, and now the kids all think she's a druggie and the comments she's had today are horrific!

AIBU to say that this was completely inappropriate of school to do? I can understand their reasoning for not informing parents, but they could at least warned families like ours.

I'll reiterate that I'm completely confident she is not on illegal drugs, but she's devastated about this.

While I understand that your daughter must be pretty upset over this, giving the pupils forewarning would have been extremely counter-productive.

Instead of blaming the police, you should be focussed on the school doing something about the bullies. Bullies will appropriate any reason real or imagined to target their victims. If it weren’t this, there would be some other excuse.

If you are in an East Midlands town beginning with S then my daughter was also in that assembly today.

One of her friends was almost hysterical as her parents smoke weed in the home and friend was terrified that the dog would pick up on it.

Even if the drugs were kept aside the dog would have still sniffed them out.

It's a shame for your daughter but I totally agree with what they're doing, drugs are rife in schools now it's out of hand and some people think it's funny to spike others.

I'm very surprised it didn't.

Very poorly handled by the school and the dog team/handler.

Obviously they can't alert even selected families ahead of time, but there are ways to avoid this situation.

Tell the kids in each room that there may or may not be a handler planted synthetic sample (its usually not synthetic but they don't need to think someones putting real drugs in their bag/pocket) - handler takes a walk around the room whilst discussing this, moving any chairs/bags etc a bit...

Then they can explain that the reason for this is to maintain the dogs training, and to do that properly, every indication is treated as a real one - person will be escorted out, dog praised and rewarded, person will come back.

Then they can also discuss that the dog can sometimes get a false positive because of legitimately prescribed medications (dogs always indicate me because of the patches I use and sometimes I take oramorph!) but again they still have to treat it as real every single time for the dogs benefit - no way to explain to the dog!

If after all that kids still bully someone, then honestly it doesnt matter what happens in teh school day, they'll find a reason to bully and its the bullying in general that needs dealing with, not preventing perfectly routine events from taking place.

Dogs are very hit and miss and it's likely that a considerable percentage of the detections were false. Your daughter carrying presumably blister packed tablets and they slept that? More likely coincidence or the dog getting it's bias from it's handler.

Also I think it's terrible they do this unannounced. They should say it's gonna happen at some point and they're only going to announce it once. The object shouldn't be catching children with drugs

What should the object be then? Not catching children with drugs even though they’re known to be using them in school? And likely will again once the dog has gone?

Or just a deterrent? Likely ineffective unless they’re seen to mean business.

Evidence? They are pretty effective although some people like to think they’re not especially lawyers looking to make money.

No because then drug dealers would just seal drugs in blister packs 🙄
They can detect tiny traces of drugs even in sealed containers or wrapped in scented things to hide them. Dogs have an excellent sense of smell.

UK trained scent detection dogs are very reliable - in lab conditions, 94% accuracy. In real life situations, a bit less than that but still, highly accurate.

Statistics for US trained dogs are far far lower though and this is down to the very different training methods used and the difference in policing (far more corruption and short cuts, much poorer quality training which indeed will lead to handler bias).

If drugs detection dogs could not pick up the scent of drugs in a blister pack, everyone would be smuggling drugs in blister packs or other air-tight plastic sealed packaging and dogs would never catch them... and yet, they do!

Every student stands in a line and walks through. The plan is they are pulled aside and slt and the police check their bags.

I’m shocked that she’s allowed to carry medication around and it’s no wonder the school has drug problems if it has such lax rules.

I feel for your DD but I don’t think there was any other way to go this.

If they had told them/their parent’s beforehand then they’d have just taken it out of their bag for the day.

If they saw who the dog sniffed out and waited until everyone was back in class then they could have also of stashed it somewhere.

If they knew your daughter had medication then perhaps they should have done an individual bag search and told her to leave her bag in the classroom for the assembly.

But I don’t think anyone should have been pre-warned as that defeats the object.

Badly handled. They could easily have announced at the start: 'This dog may sniff out prescription/OTC medication; does anyone have any prescriptio/OTC medication they would like to hand to a teacher for safekeeping before the dog starts work?'

If the teachers had suspicions that anything handed in to them might not be legitimate, they could have discreetly run it past the police.

This dog may sniff out prescription/OTC medication; does anyone have any prescriptio/OTC medication they would like to hand to a teacher for safekeeping before the dog starts work?'

Except these types of medication are also sold for profit in schools.

UK has a drug issue with children, let them do their job to keep the children safe and away from drugs.

Except these types of medication are also sold for profit in schools.

If it's prescription medication, it would be a two second job to check on the label that it was prescribed to the person handing it in.

If it's OTC medication, what on earth is the point of selling it for profit, when anyone can go and buy it OTC themselves?

I think the school's safeguarding policy's are the problem. I know you say it is a reasonable adjustment for her to carry opioids (even weak over the counter stuff) but no children should have medicine on them except epi pens and inhalers so not even carrying paracetamol.

A better adjustment would be to have a procedure for her to get quick access to the tablets.

We have sniffer dogs in, not police ones though, they sniff around the lunch queue and toilets. Everyone knows they come in, about 1 a term, but never when. And we are a school without a drugs problem.

I feel bad for your DD. To single out a child as a druggie/dealer, who already is vulnerable due to significant health problems and is being bullied, is completely unnecessary. To then leave her exposed to further bullying as a result is unconscionable.

Even if the school are crap, you need to raise this, very specifically that because of their actions plus her poor health she's now subject to even more bullying.

Also, the school may decide to do this again and it would good to preemptively see if there's a way it can be avoided. Not least because undoubtedly the stress of it all will not make your DDs physical condition any better.

In secondary school its common for children to carry and maintain there own medication ds carrys pain killer's and other meds the school are aware he has them portioned into doses

I can assure you that the police coming into schools is fairly normal, they raided DD's sixth form at least once a term - the creative arts block was usually a good source of training for the dogs - used the college minibus once to get all the guilty parties to the police station for their cautions (cannabis mostly, lots of knock off vodka too)

This does sound quite embarrassing for your daughter and a bit misguided of the school. If this was for demonstration / assembly purposes then they could easily have issued a warning. If it was for actually sniffing out drugs then doing it in a crowded school hall is a stupid idea. Imagine if they had sniffed out the local teen coke dealer and the kudos they would get for that from their mates. Surely a better idea would be having the dogs just walking the corridors or stood in the entrance so that anyone selected could be taken aside discreetly.

The school need to be doing something about the vile abuse your daughter has been receiving too!

I wonder if DS would get picked up on / scented due to being around my vast array of drugs?

(current snapshot of one’s I think dogs would sniff at:
8 x opioids tablets daily plus 12 opioids capsules daily, plus 2 other controlled drugs capsules daily, and oramorph as req
plus diazapam as req)….

would DS smell of these as my bedroom must reek, and he spends a lot of time in my room hanging out, especially in my bed. He passes me my medicines every other day or so, and very occasionally helps me divide them up into boxes, so does touch them / the packaging quite often, so might have residue in his skin?

Not easy for a 12-14 year old to go and buy codeine in a chemist. I don't think they would sell it to an under 18. It's sold on at schools - along with the contents of some parent's drug cabinets. Kids will and do take anything - they have no idea what effect a lot of these drugs will cause but other kids "respect" those willing to give it a go.

If a school has a serious drug problem (and an awful lot do), then actually getting the dogs in unannounced will have the greatest impact as they might catch some of the school's regular dealers who can't face discipline unless actually caught and also it might frighten a few kids off using drugs.

You see that would've been great

Not in the 4 I’ve worked in. 0/4 let students carry their own.

UK trained scent detection dogs are very reliable - in lab conditions, 94% accuracy. In real life situations, a bit less than that but still, highly accurate

www.release.org.uk/blog/uk-festivals-sniffer-dogs-their-regulations-your-rights

"The only exception to whether a sniff is considered an illegal search, then, is if you’re “funnelled, delayed, targeted, interfered with, or requested to change direction” to allow the dog to sniff you; this is in keeping with PACE’s stipulation that the police can’t stop you and then look for grounds for a physical search"

So it's on dodgy ground legally as well I'd have thought? They've all been put in one place so they can be sniffed, which is an indiscriminate search