When Carroll's school board decides next month whether to allow random searches by canine narcotics investigators in high schools, it will consider a policy that the county state's attorney hopes will protect the rights of students.
State's Attorney Jerry F. Barnes, who proposed the idea to a group of North Carroll High School parents last month, doesn't see the dogs as a carte blanche ticket to search every nook and cranny of Carroll's high schools.
His insistence that officers obtain search warrants whenever a drug dog reacts to a locker or a car on a school parking lot -- even if the school principal wants the space searched -- would place Carroll on the conservative end of the practice.
"For this to work, you have to [be] mindful of the rights of the students, and you have to make sure what you're doing fits inside constitutional parameters," Mr. Barnes said last week.
The restrained use of a tactic in the war on drugs is new to the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force, which for years has aggressively pursued its fight against drugs.
Now, with Mr. Barnes' insistence on search warrants to peer into students' lockers and cars, the task force looks as if it might be taking a less overt approach to its drug-fighting efforts.
Nearly 15 years ago, the attorney general's office issued an opinion stating that the use of dogs in schools is acceptable, as long as their use is limited.
Although principals have the right to search a locker with nothing more than a reasonable suspicion, police using dogs must have a warrant or the student's consent, that opinion said.
Over the years, other school districts have adopted portions of the opinion. But in some -- such as Howard County -- warrants are no longer needed if a school principal gives police permission to conduct the search.
Other school districts -- such as Frederick and Cecil counties -- allow warrantless searches.
But the only discipline allowed to be taken against the student is administrative, not criminal.
Mr. Barnes -- and the Carroll school board -- point to two reasons to adhere to the attorney general's opinion and state school policy: a search warrant protects the case and makes it harder to have any seized evidence thrown out on constitutional grounds.
"We have to remember that we are dealing with human beings and their basic rights here," said Peter B. McDowell, the district's director of secondary schools.
Mr. Barnes said, "Without the warrant, or the consent, we could ** run into some real problems."
The conservative approach to drug dogs mirrors Mr. Barnes' direction for the task force he oversees.
His predecessor, five-term State's Attorney Thomas E. Hickman, pushed prosecution to the limits, his detractors said.
Asset seizure was common in cases involving even the smallest amounts of drugs, and defendants were encouraged to settle their cases through cash payments used to buy back goods seized by police.
Mr. Hickman, who boasted of his zero-tolerance approach to drug enforcement, said that his office acted strongly and swiftly because "that's what the community wanted."
"You've got to make drug use and drug distribution stop," the former state's attorney said yesterday. "We wanted to get distribution convictions, so that if they deal drugs again, we could really hammer them. We thought that was the community's wishes. You've got to make them [drug dealers] stop."
"We want to take a constitution-friendly approach with drugs," Mr. Barnes said.
Mr. Barnes said the task force has yet to file for the forfeiture of cars or property since he took office almost two months ago.
Several weeks ago, police stopped a car, found drugs in it and seized the vehicle. But after reviewing the case, Mr. Barnes advised the task force to return the car to its owner.
"It simply didn't meet the criteria for forfeiture," he said.
Mr. Barnes said that for him to seize and ask for forfeiture, a car -- or any other property -- needs to be part of a felony drug transaction.
He said the new approach may not be the most profitable in terms of money for the task force, but it is the right way to prosecute drug dealers.
"We're not in this for the money, although we would like to be self-sufficient in our day-to-day expenses," the prosecutor said.
"But this is not a profit-making operation. We're a law enforcement group."