SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – When school starts in Seminole County, so will random classroom searches with a sheriff’s office canine to make campuses safer.
In June, administrators at Seminole High School got a tip that a summer school student brought a gun to school.
The School Resource Deputy (SRD) searched the student’s backpack and found the gun and arrested him before anyone was harmed.
It’s the latest reason Seminole County started using a police dog to search schools – and Seminole County Sheriff’s Office Chief Rick Francis, in charge of school safety, said it has gotten results even in a surprising way.
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Francis gave News 6 a demonstration of a classroom search with K-9 Dragus inside a conference room at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.
Dragus’ mission was to find a metal scent detection training box, similar to a metal high school locker. The box was hidden under a table at the rear of the conference room with what Francis referred to as “contraband.”
Dragus is specially trained to find contraband: guns, gun powder, bullets and other illegal and banned items.
Dragus located and alerted to the hidden box within 30 seconds under the watchful eye of his canine handler.
Francis was tasked by Sheriff Dennis Lemma to invent what has become the current safety program at Seminole County Schools.
“We’re very fortunate, we had an opportunity at Seminole County Schools to assume ultimate responsibilities of the schools back in 2015 and of course we’ve seized that moment,” Francis said. “I look at school safety from a holistic, multi-layered approach. We transitioned to looking at maybe some other ways we could use canines in our schools and one of the things was with concealed or contraband detection.”
Parents and students are notified at the beginning of the school year that their school may be subject to a random canine visit at any time.
During the visit, the SRD walks into the classroom with his supervisor, the canine handler, the canine and a school administrator.
They inform students the canine will be do an item search, not a person search. Often that evokes unsolicited honesty.
“Ironically, this is meant for one purpose but there’s always some ancillary things that happen, for example I think in this last year there were about 25 or 26 vapes that were voluntarily handed over before the search,” Francis said. “And this is just part of a layered approach, this is not to be invasive. The dog simply just goes through the classroom and takes a few minutes and we’re done. And the class goes back into session.”
Dragus has not detected any guns in schools but did detect gun powder.
“Although we didn’t find any weapons which is a good thing, he did indicate on a couple things, for example the dog indicated on a starter pistol used for track and field,” Francis said. “He alerted on an R.O.T.C. cannon because the black powder is used for a touchdown or celebration.”
Last school year, Dragus and his handler randomly searched 550 classrooms at all 66 Seminole County Schools. Francis said several pocket knives were voluntarily handed over during the searches.
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