Drug Searches Leave Residue Of Doubt Some Wonder If Handful Of Charges Worth Students’ Feelings Of Betrayal

Scratched cars, feelings of betrayal and a handful of pending criminal charges are the residue of recent drug searches in Coeur d’Alene high school parking lots.

While officials praise the cooperation of students and hail the search effort as a success, some parents are wondering whether the intrusion and embarrassment that innocent students endured was worth it.

“It seems to me that this was an example of how our legal system is not supposed to work, and how people in positions of authority can abuse the rights of law-abiding citizens,” parent Shireene Hale wrote to the police and Lake City High School’s principal.

In the nearly daylong search March 15, eight drug-sniffing dogs identified 65 cars in the two school parking lots as having contraband.

When those cars were searched, police discovered 8.7 grams of marijuana, one can of beer, firecrackers and tobacco.

One student had 5.7 grams of pot in his car and admitted to dealing. The felony case has been forwarded to the prosecutor’s office along with five misdemeanor charges.

Of the other students whose cars were searched, about half admitted that drugs had been in the car, police said.

Students were pulled out of class to be questioned, often within view of their peers. The search took longer than expected, running through the lunch periods.

Some dogs scratched cars as they worked. City police have forwarded at least two claims for damages to the city’s legal department.

Hale, whose daughter’s car was inspected, said students did not know it was OK to request a search warrant.

One student did request a warrant, but police did not produce one. They had 60 warrant applications on hand, but each one needed a judge’s approval - a requirement that would have slowed the process.

Authorities defended the drug bust, saying student rights were protected and the school district’s goal was achieved.

“We sent the message that we want our schools to be drug free,” said Doug Cresswell, district superintendent.

Even so, some school officials had reservations about how the search was conducted. In the future, some said, they’d like to see it done more quickly with more privacy.

“The whole environment, the atmosphere, was intimidating to the kids,” said John Brumley, Lake City High School principal. “As far as their rights, everything was very, very carefully researched.”

One of Brumley’s biggest concerns was the risk of damaging the relationship between students and staff.

“It sets up another level of us and them.”

It didn’t help that some students were subjected to a search when they were apparently innocent, he added. Several of those parents called with concerns, he said.

“There’s no sense of relief in me about any of it,” Brumley said. “We did what we had to do.”

Steve Casey, Coeur d’Alene High School’s principal, shared Brumley’s worries, but said the action was necessary.

“I hope we didn’t lose their trust or faith, but I’d do it again in a minute,” he said.

The search was approved by a majority of student leaders and had the support of those students who want to keep drugs out of school, said Lake City student council president Dave Nelson.

Despite that, many students feel betrayed, he said.

“A lot of people are really upset about it,” he added. “They feel targeted. Like the teens in town are the only ones doing this (using drugs).”

Overall, school officials and police said the community response has been positive. Coeur d’Alene Police Capt. Carl Bergh estimates that critics are “in the extreme minority.”

“Even those parents who had their cars searched and nothing was found, they said ‘Do it again,”’ said Vern Newby, school board chairman. “And from the support we’ve had from students saying we need to get a better handle on the drug situation on campus, I would say, yes, it was worth it.”

To people who question whether it was worth the disruption to uncover less than an ounce of marijuana, Newby and Bergh emphasize the point of a drug-free school zone.

“It isn’t, ‘We want to create a school zone where less than an ounce of marijuana is OK or only one joint is OK,”’ Bergh said. “We want a drug-free zone.”

The parking lot searches at Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools came a year after the student councils, parent advisory groups and the school board approved the measure.

It also came a couple of weeks after students at the two high schools voluntarily formed a student task force to address drug use among their peers.

Anecdotal evidence and the most recent school district student survey shows that drug use among teenagers is climbing.

“My gut feeling is that it is (up),” said Carolyn Peterson, director of Kootenai County’s Juvenile Diversion program. “I hear the same thing from the kids we work with and also from kids in the high school who aren’t in the (diversion) program.”

When Brumley asked a group of 70 students last week if they thought there was a drug problem at school, “it was almost unanimous that there was,” he said.

Overall, the availability of drugs has increased, said Norm Mahoney, Coeur d’Alene’s drug education coordinator.

“These are new times,” he said.

From the results of recent searches at Sandpoint High School, it appears that the random searches there have kept drugs off campus - or at least out of the school.

A search of 200 lockers last Monday turned up nothing. Drug dogs have never searched the high school parking lot, however.

“The fact that we don’t find anything we take as a validation that it’s working,” said assistant principal Bill Miller. “To the degree to which we’ve done it, I think it’s worthwhile. My personal feeling is we could overdo it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ACTIVITY In Kootenai County, overall felony drug charges jumped from 93 in 1994 to 226 in 1995, according to the county prosecutor’s office. Police say about 10 percent of drug arrests involve juveniles. Much of the increase in drug activity is in methamphetamines, although none was found in last week’s drug searches at Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools.