I'm reposting this because it's not getting any responses down in the Juvenile Law section. I hope I'm not offending the rules of the forum...

We have a local school which has hired a company to bring in drug-detecting dogs to check the cars parked in the school’s parking lot while school is in session. They are hoping to stop kids from dealing or buying drugs on campus and believe that if a juvenile was arrested on campus that it would send a strong message to the rest of the student body. Their proposal: if the dog “hits” on a vehicle, the school officials will pull the driver of the vehicle out of class, inform them of what happened, order the juvenile to open the vehicle and conduct a search of the vehicle. If drugs are found, they will call the police and let the police officer investigate and decide whether to arrest. The police department has asked us to weigh in on whether this procedure is constitutionally permissible, seeing as the police have no information on the reliability of the dogs.

I believe that the search is permissible because it is reasonable under New Jersey v. TLO: the search is reasonable at its inception so long as the drug dogs are shown to have a reliable track record in detecting drugs, and the search is reasonable in its scope/duration/intensity so long as the school officials are only looking in the vehicle in places where drugs could possibly be found. I believe it is safer to go ahead and search on these grounds and not ask for consent to avoid any potential coercion arguments. I believe that the police department’s lack of knowledge about the dogs’ reliability doesn’t matter so long as the school officials trust the dogs, since school officials are completing the search long before the police are ever involved.

I recognize that proving possession is going to be an issue in these cases, but putting that issue aside, do you think these types of searches would pass constitutional muster?

Why not get a warrant and then there are not any issues? Drug dog alert would be probable cause, and there doesn't seem to be any time issue (owner of the vehicle is in class all day).

BUT--Alert would only be probable cause if the officer asking for the warrant is willing to swear to the affidavit, and if I were an officer I would not do so based on an alert from a private drug dog business I knew nothing about (certifications, etc.).

I would not encourage my local police officers to accept cases investigated, searched, and completed by other people, especially if they have no knowledge of the reliability of the basis of the search. Just my two cents.

In fact, I would loudly discourage any cases coming to me through an officer that did not have complete knowledge of all aspects of the search and seizure. I get similar things often on juvenile cases from schools, and I have to remind officers to backtrack the school investigation because their issues are not the same as law enforcement issues.