Drug-Sniffing Dog May Be Used at Redondo Union

may allow a drug-sniffing dog into the school to regularly search for drugs if the Board of Education approves the proposal.

Assistant Superintendent Frank DeSena said he will make a recommendation to use a police canine after parents and students expressed support for the measure.

“Students think it would be a deterrent for other students to bring drugs onto campus,” DeSena said. “We’re not naive about this. We don’t think it’s going to stop everyone from using drugs. But the biggest thing parents say is they don’t want their child exposed to other students using drugs on campus.”

The district’s Drug and Alcohol Community Task Force last month recommended that dogs regularly search for drugs at the high school. The task force, a non-public body of parents, students, law enforcement and Beach Cities Health District officials, and school district staff, is in its third year of existence.

DeSena said a drug-sniffing dog can be used in different ways. The dog can sniff lockers, or it can search in the student parking lots. The dog can also sniff backpacks in classrooms while students wait in the hallway.

Redondo Beach police Capt. Jeff Hink said the department’s police dog is trained to detect marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, which includes other opiate-based drugs. Between 10 and 13 percent of Redondo Union students polled said they have been drunk on alcohol or high on drugs at least once while on school property, according to the most recent California Healthy Kids Survey.

DeSena said a drug-sniffing dog cannot detect alcohol and does not address that issue.

Superintendent Steven Keller used to work as a middle school principal 15 years ago in Orange County. He was charged with cleaning up a “troubled” school that expelled 11 students for drug possession the previous year.

Although Keller’s middle school did not employ a drug-sniffing dog, Keller said he and parents and staff cleaned up the school by actively being present on campus. However, the students ended up doing drugs off campus, Keller said.

“The reality was that drug use was pushed outside our little fiefdom, the drawbridge went down, the kids went over the little moat and out into the community where they knew they were less likely to get busted,” Keller said.

Keller said schools and the community at large must commit to limiting drug use, but parents are the most important influence when it comes to identifying and limiting their children’s drug habit.

Since parents must be notified, a dog would probably not begin searching for drugs at RU until next school year.

Both Keller and DeSena said that if the Board of Education approves the measure, the dog would likely be allowed access to the school and students’ possessions slowly and in incremental steps. 

Mira Costa High School and Manhattan Beach Middle School each allow a dog onto campus to search for drugs, and the Torrance school district uses dogs at the high schools and the middle schools. DeSena’s proposal would only allow a dog onto the Redondo Union campus and not at the middle schools.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board also is considering allowing a drug-sniffing dog at Palos Verdes High School.