Bozeman schools using dogs to find drugs, weapons - Gail Schontzler - My comments

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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(I'm troubled by this article. On one hand the schools have a legitimate interest in controlling the flow of drugs into the schools. On the other hand, where is the line drawn regarding a person's expectation of being secure in his person and property?)

Jetta loves her job.

The 5-year-old black Labrador retriever gets excited whenever she’s called on to search for illegal drugs, alcohol, weapons or medications, says handler Dennis Jones, owner of Interquest Detection Canines of Montana.

“She turned out to be an amazing little dog,” Jones said. “She wants to work.”

Jetta made her first unannounced visit to Bozeman High School last month to search classrooms and lockers.

Principal Ken Gibson said it went “great.”

“We have a lot of people complaining that drugs are everywhere in our building,” Gibson said. In the past, law enforcement dogs have searched the school occasionally. But they’re trained to sniff one locker at time, he said, not to go through a whole line of lockers.

Jetta “alerted” several times at Bozeman High, Gibson said, but “every one was explainable.” For example, the dog found what turned out to be an Excedrin in a purse. (So the search went "great," but every alert was a false alarm? ) Either Bozeman High students are being careful to avoid bringing illegal things to school, “or school is not as bad as what they think,” Gibson said. (Or maybe the dog missed all the drugs. After all, it has a zero success rate.)

More searches are planned — next at Bozeman’s two middle schools, Jones said. He didn’t want to reveal the date. 

All three Bozeman schools held assemblies in December to introduce Jetta and her fellow search dogs to students, to demonstrate the dogs’ abilities and friendliness, and to warn students there will be unannounced searches.

Asked if anyone complained that search dogs smacked of a police state, Gibson said he heard from one upset parent worried about illegal searches. Gibson explained that the dogs only search school-owned property — classrooms, lockers, hallways and parking lots — and don’t sniff students, which would require a specific “reasonable suspicion.” (Reasonable Suspicion a lower standard of proof than Probable Cause. These kinds of terms are applied to what a law enforcement officer is allowed to do regarding detaining or searching a person. So is it reasonable to use dog-provided evidence when that evidence is 100% faulty? Further, this is a private security company providing its services. What authority does it operate under? Is it held to the standards of conduct required of law enforcement, and is it trained in those standards? Can it arrest people?) “I heard more kids say they’re glad they’re here, or ‘cool,’” Gibson said. (Um, yeah. The opinions of kids carry more weight than the reasonable concern of an adult?) 

Jones, former vice principal at Polson High, got the Interquest Canines 11 years ago. He and his dogs travel hundreds of miles each week, from Montana to the Dakotas and Wyoming, from schools to oil rigs and prerelease centers.

Rather than using German shepherds that are trained as police narcotics dogs or attack dogs that bite, Jones said Interquest uses peoplefriendly hunting dogs, like Labs and golden retrievers. They don’t come in like a
SWAT team or treat all students like felons, he said.

Interquest dogs are trained to alert to illegal narcotics (meth, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy and LSD); alcohol (beer, wine, whiskey, even hard cider); gunpowder (guns, ammunition, explosives, fireworks, spent
bullets); and medications (over-the-counter and prescription, including OxyContin).

“It’s a game of hide and seek for the dogs,” Jones said. (Ms. Schontzler, the author of the article, shifts attention from the legal issues to how cute the dogs are...)

His dogs recently found in a central Montana middle school what looked like a large ballpoint pen that could shoot a .22-caliber bullet. The dogs can find an unopened can of beer in a locker, or a jacket with the
lingering smell of marijuana smoke.

The cost to schools is $650 for a full day.

Jetta, born in Michigan, was so hyperactive and prone to biting that her owners were going to euthanize her. A new owner got her at 5 months old, but four months later put her up for sale on Craigslist. An Interquest
trainer in Michigan took Jetta before she could be put to sleep, and that changed her life.

“This is one smart little dog,” Jones said. “She’s extremely fast.” As soon as he puts on Jetta’s harness, the cue that a search is about to start, “she gets turbo charged.”

“We want kids to feel comfortable with the dogs, but uncomfortable bringing stuff to campus,” Jones said. “We think it helps create a more safe environment for students.” (I can understand the deterrent angle. That makes sense. But the legal ramifications of proper searches, chain of custody of evidence, and what authority a non-officer possesses are troubling.)

Gail Schontzler can be reached at gails@dailychronicle.com  or 582-2633. 

GOP against women’s health - Letter by Cara Wilder

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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Republican legislators in Helena recently voted against Title X funding for low-income health care for women and families. The philosophy goes something like this: “If you have sex, we won’t offset funding for contraceptives. If you get pregnant, we won’t allow you to choose what to do with your body. If you have a baby, don’t expect any medical assistance caring for that baby.” (I wonder if the Left is ever going to get tired of recycling these inane talking points. Year after year, decade after decade, we hear these things ad nauseum. Does anyone really believe that Republicans are deliberately and purposefully trying to kill and enslave people? What sort of lowest common denominator does the Left intend to appeal to? What sort of brain-dead voter really believes this vapid nonsense?

Notice the absurd equation: If you have sex... no government-paid contraception. Government, apparently, is your daddy, your husband, your provider, and those eeeevil Republicans are going to keep you from getting what you're owed. They want to make you give birth and then cut your funding so you can't take care of your baby! They don't care about you and your needs. If they cared, they would give government money to you. That's how you show you care. Give people government money.

The unstated agenda, however, is that the Left thinks it's better to kill unborn babies than for them to live in poverty. It's better for a woman to not have the burden of children if she's poor. It's better for someone not to be born at all in certain circumstances. For you see, the best way to lower the poverty rate is to prevent poor people from reproducing. This is a neo-eugenics movement where undesirables are being targeted by preventing them from breeding.

In Texas, after cutting Title X funds (resulting in the closure of over 50 family-planning clinics), the state’s over-zealous legislators are now scrambling to find hundreds of millions of dollars to offset tens of thousands of unplanned pregnancies. (Unfortunately, this is simply false. An article just appeared in the Bozeman Chronicle which said, "Now Texas legislators may spend $100 million of their general fund on family planning to head off estimates of 24,000 unplanned pregnancies that could cost taxpayers $273 million." Notice this is an opinion expressed about what could happen. 

The Guttmacher Institute notes that "in 2006, 309,000 Texas residents had an unintended pregnancy, a rate of 62 per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Births resulting from these unintended pregnancies cost the state and federal governments $1,289 million that year." That is WITH Title X funding. Can we say with some certainty that Title X is not doing a whole lotta good? And by that metric, is it possible that removing funding probably will not have the predicted effect, and may in fact have a positive effect?)  

If our extremist legislators get their way, Montana will follow in lockstep with Texas.

In 2008, contraceptive services provided at Title X-supported centers in Montana helped women avoid 5,300 unintended ("Unintended?" More accurately, "unwanted.") pregnancies, (How can they possibly know how many pregnancies DIDN'T happen? Are they counting the number of times people are boinking without getting pregnant? And by the way, that's 5,300 fewer taxpayers.) 

which would have resulted in 2,400 births and 2,200 abortions. (You probably rolled your eyes when I wrote that Title X is a neo-eugenics program. But here we see that nearly half of pregnancies to poor women end in abortion. Still rolling your eyes?) 

In the absence of these services, the number of unintended pregnancies in Montana would be 62 percent higher, and the number of abortions would be 114 percent higher.  (Guttmacher Institute, 2009/10) (Again, it's just stark. How they hate pregnancies! There's some sort of nobility in preventing pregnancies or aborting babies if the mother is poor. They view themselves as doing some sort of good by making sure the poor don't have babies. It's mystifying.) 

As Bozeman’s Bridgercare director Mari Dominguez astutely stated, “Responsible government should make it easier for citizens to do the right thing.” (Wow. This turns the concept on its head. "Doing the right thing" is a statement of personal responsibility, making choices for yourself that make it so you're not a burden on society. But now "doing the right thing" means "having government funded services so that if you screw up the government will bail you out.") 

Is the logic really so difficult to understand? (Bad logic is always hard to understand.)

If you cut funding that helps prevent unwanted (Woops. Must be a slip of the word processor. I'm sure she meant "unintended.") 

pregnancies, you’re going to create more unwanted pregnancies. (A Sandra Fluke wannabe. "If you don't pay for my contraceptives [because I'm going to have sex anyway], then it's your fault when I get pregnant, and you're going to have to pay me to raise the kid. So pay me now or pay me later. Either way, you're going to pay me, or feel guilty for all the problems that are your fault.")

Cara Wilder Bozeman

Montana Constitution - 1889 original