Putting Drug Dogs Back In School

(CHAMPAIGN)---Drug dogs haven't searched Champaign schools for nine years, but that soon may change. School board members are talking with police about carrying out random searches. It's all in an effort to crack down on drugs inside central and centennial high schools. School board president David Tomlinson says members in the community started the push to bring them back and now they're moving forward on it. As standard policy, the board allows for random searches outside the schools in the parking lot and for inside the school once classes have let out. Officials say drug dogs haven't been inside the classroom since the late 1990's, but feel now is the time to get ahead of bigger problems before they have to face them later. "We thought this was a way to deter kids from bringing drugs onto campus, than that's what we want to do." Says Tomlinson "And we're just concerned about trying to stem the tide and maybe act as a deterrent to do that." Tomlinson says they've just started to talk to the state's attorney’s office about putting the dogs back to work. He also says those dogs will primarily be used for random searches, unless they have a suspicion that someone has brought drugs into school.