On Feb. 19 Rockbridge County High School collaborated with Amherst and Bedford Counties sheriff departments and conducted a K9 drug search.
Sergeant Lawhorn ensures students that the search was solely for the purpose of safety.
“I think there’s a lot of confusion and fear there, just about things that I’ve heard floating around [the school] after the search, but there is a difference students and teachers should know between hold and a lockdown,” Lawhorn said.
Students were instructed to remain in a hold in their second period class for just over two hours while administration and Sergeant Lawhorn conducted the search. A hold is a protocol in which students and teachers are completely safe and told to continue instruction while staying in their classroom and out of the halls. A lockdown is a much more serious protocol in which students and teachers are instructed to stay out of sight and remain quiet.
Although the search created some panic in the student body, the unexpected nature of the search was to ensure the most authentic results. Lawhorn explains with a metaphor.
“If you were speeding on the interstate and you knew a cop was ahead, you would slow down wouldn’t you?” Lawhorn said.
The search was conducted without prior notice to teachers and students in hopes to provide administration and authorities with an accurate picture of the drug use within the student population. The search was also conducted in random classrooms throughout the school to ensure this.
Lawhorn relays that K9s are a tool that are used for our schools safety and should not make students scared.
“They’re just using that as another way of keeping students and staff safe and then again it’s not just drugs, they do alert on gunpowder residue and firearms. So it’s the stuff that we don’t want here and we hope to keep it out of here,” Lawhorn said.
The purpose of the drug search was solely to keep what doesn’t belong in schools, like vapes, drugs, and guns, out of school. Lawhorn explained that a future search could very well be conducted, we just don’t know when that could happen.
