A great piece on drug dogs out of Charleston, NC
“Teenagers shuffle into their classrooms after an announcement tells them they are not allowed in the hallways at Riverside High School. Once all students are safely tucked away, a German shepherd named Nitro heads through the hallways with Kanawha County Sheriff’s Deputy C.M. Morgan in tow. It is a typical day for Nitro and DEA, the two drug dogs that are at the school.
Their jobs are to sniff out any drugs students may have brought to school and hidden in their lockers. On a Thursday morning, Nitro eagerly walked down Riverside’s hallway with his tail wagging. He walked through the quarter mile of hallway to begin his search at the end of the school building. During this walk, he takes a general sniff, getting an idea of which lockers smell suspicious, said his handler Deputy C.M. Morgan.
At one point through the walk, Nitro’s head jerks. It’s a sign that there are probably drugs somewhere in the vicinity. “He knows the odor is there,” Morgan said. “It’s hard to tell what we’ll find there.” The officer and dog don’t stop, but continue to the end of the hallway. When Nitro reaches the area again during a thorough search, he will probably give his signal for drugs. Morgan and Nitro reach the end of the hallway and begin their hunt.
“Find the birdie!” Morgan says in a playful voice to Nitro.
This is his sign to begin. Nitro and Morgan run up and down a row of lockers in a clockwise pattern, Nitro sniffing the whole time.
He thinks of this as a sort of game. “It’s play time,” Morgan explained.
The dogs are trained with swatch cloths drenched in the smell of narcotics. They play fetch with the swatch cloths during training. When the dogs are out on an actual job, it is like they are searching for the swatch cloths.
Nitro makes it through a couple rows of lockers before he stops at a particular locker. He starts sniffing in fast breaths.
“Get it, get it!” Morgan says to Nitro in an excited voice. Nitro begins clawing at the locker.
School officials get a key to the locker. Inside, they find an empty box of Philly blunt cigars. Students will hollow them out and put marijuana inside, said David Stone, a teacher at the school.
Because the box is empty, though, school officials and police can do nothing about the find.”
Read the Entire Story at Charleston Daily Mail
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