Friday, January 28, 2005

This one made me smile... Link. Police were chasing a truancy suspect and entered the unlocked garage of an extremely popular High School science teacher, finding marijuana plants and bags of marijuana. The teacher came home and said: "Well, I've been growing the marijuana in the garage for approximately eight months so I could save myself some money instead of buying it off the street." Prosecutors dismissed the charges after realizing that the police lacked probable cause to enter his house. Now it looks like the teacher will also keep his job. Instead of the usual pious hand-wringing about how horrible it was that a teacher was -- gasp -- a pot-head, the school plans to reinstate him (with one year of random drug testing to make it look good). And instead of getting trashed in the press, here's how his principal talked about him: Sharon Meng, the Paschal High principal, said she would welcome Sills back to the school, where he teaches advanced placement environmental systems and honors biology. "He is outstanding," Meng said. "He really knows what he is talking about. The kids love him and have a great deal of respect for him." Meng said Sills is known for always being available for students and going the extra mile with "meaningful" lab work, study trips and field work. She said she had no concerns about his return to the school. "Blake would never do anything irresponsible at school and certainly not around children," she said. "I have been here five years, and I have never heard him say anything or do anything inappropriate to a child." A tip of the hat on this one to Melissa, posting over at D'Alliance. It's nice to see posts there again. We miss Baylen terribly (and I've offered him the opportunity to post here whenever he wants), but I also look forward to hearing from others on the dynamic Drug Policy Alliance web team. 9:16:26 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Who let the dogs in? Jacob Sullum has a nice recap of the Illinois v. Caballes Supreme Court ruling. It's been heartening to see the amount of negative reaction to the ruling around the web. At the same time, it was depressing to hear two local police chiefs on the radio gleefully talk about how this frees them up to really start using the drug dogs. After reading the decision again, I am even more convinced that this is going to end up haunting Justice Stevens. It's poorly written, and it's bad law. Oh, and just a note for those who favor drug-sniffing dogs because they see a dual purpose of watching out for terrorists smuggling in explosives, it doesn't work that way. As Jackl reminded me: One thing about dawgs ya'll ought to know: a scent dog is either a drug dog or a bomb-sniffing dog, but not both: See, K9 Units in Public Transportation: A Guide for Decision Makers (pdf, p. 52) (National Research Council). Specialty K9s are never trained in both explosives and narcotics detection. K9 trainers refer to this combination as dangerous training, meaning that it dulls the capabilities of the K9 to perform effectively at either specialty. So every dog that is trained as a drug sniffing dog is one that is not trained to detect explosives. 9:31:28 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []