Weapons and Drug Detection
Starts with the Bus Driver

Shanna Thompson | Associate Editor

With 24 million children riding the bus to-and-from school each day, districts across the country are increasingly aware that weapons and drug detection must be in place long before students arrive at the steps of the school house.

As bus drivers are the adults with whom many students start and end their school day, they are also the first, last and best opportunity to spot and prevent a problem.

It is a reality stressed often by Mike Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International Inc., a leading non-profit school safety organization that has trained 20,000 to 30,000 school transportation officials during the past five years. Not only do a number of assaults occur on the ride to school, but many of the weapons and drugs found on students on campus arrive there via the school bus.

"What we are seeing is changes in trends," said Dorn, a former chief of police for Bibb County , Ga. , Schools. "It is having a dramatic impact on our buses because of some of the behavior that is exhibited."

Surprisingly, it is often private school kids and elementary students who are caught with weapons, said Dorn, adding that there are cases where weapons have been found on children as young as the second grade. It isn't as common a practice for private schools to have offenders arrested as is the protocol in most public school systems, he said. And many times, in both public and private schools, the measures aren't in place to check elementary kids for drugs and weapons because most districts focus their efforts at the high school level.

While one incident of weapons or drugs on the school bus is too much, said Gwinnet County Schools Director of Transportation Grant Reppert, most of the infractions in his district occur either as a joke or for defensive purposes, such as protection from a bully. The district has seen little in the way of drugs on the school buses, but when it does happen, he said, it is usually "in your face" kids who will smoke marijuana on a bus because they think they can.

Other violations are often a result of the changing definition of a "weapon," for instance, a student bringing a pair of scissors onto the bus as part of a class project. And this year, Gwinnett has also seen a significant trend towards pellet guns, which look like a pistol in every way except for a red dot painted below the muzzle, Reppert said.

Training for his bus drivers is not specific to weapons or drugs but focuses on the behavior changes in students and teaching drivers how to build a trusting relationship with the riders.

"A trusted driver will often be told about something going on that an administrator will not," he said.

When a weapon- or drug-related situation does arise on a Gwinnett bus, an extensive procedure kicks into gear. Drivers contact the dispatcher and report a "10W," a transmission code designed not to alarm the riders, said Reppert. The driver then pulls over at the nearest safe location and engages the student in a conversation to defuse the situation, while dispatch contacts local law enforcement and the school resource officer.

"Based on this approach, we have only had one case in the last three years where the student did not surrender the weapon before law enforcement arrived on scene," Reppert said.

Across the country in Tukwila School District south of Seattle school resource officers also respond to drug and weapon infractions on school buses, said SRO Lisa Goines.

The nature of a violation will dictate how a situation is handled, she said. For example, if it is determined that a child brought a knife on the school bus but has turned the weapon over to the driver, it is likely that the SRO and principal will handle the situation. But a "weapon in play" will activate the policies and training for an emergency situation.

By law in the state of Washington weapons and drugs found on school grounds must be turned over to law enforcement. Goines said the most common contraband found on children in the Tukwila District are traditionally knives, tobacco, marijuana and alcohol.

Some states like New Jersey are stiffening the penalties for drug-related offenses on school buses. Senate Bill 1427, sponsored by Sen. Shirley Turner, clarifies that the bus is included on the "school zone" where upgraded penalties apply to drug possession by any student or adult within 1,000 feet of school property.

The bill was motivated by an incident where a bus driver was caught smoking marijuana on a school bus while he waited for a group of kindergarteners who were on a field trip to the beach, Turner said.

"(It's) an additional measure closing a loophole that would protect our school children, their health and safety," she said.

Types of Violators

Dorn explained that for bus drivers and other school officials to adequately detect and deter weapons on the bus, they first need to understand the different types of violators. Among younger children caught with weapons or drugs, there is very often a "show-and-tell" element to the situation, he explained. It might be a BB pistol or a knife, but the primary motivation to bringing it onto the bus and to the school grounds could be to show it off to peers, not necessarily to harm anyone.

Another type of unintentional weapons violator could be a kid who simply forgets that a device used in an activity away from school, such as a hunting knife, is still in his pocket.

On the other end of the spectrum is the student who had been the target of chronic bullying. The situation with a "plotter" involves a targeted act of violence, said Dorn.
"In their mind they are carrying that weapon to school to protect themselves," he said. "The reality is their idea of self-defense doesn't agree with ours."

Driver Training

Fortunately, awareness and detection methods can be taught to bus drivers who, if they can spot suspicious activity in time, can prevent a situation from escalating. For example, a specific type of repeated bodily shifting that will occur between 50 and 200 times a day could indicate that an individual may have a gun in his or her waistband. Drivers can be taught to identify the shape of a pistol in a pocket. And while swords and rifles can be concealed in a pant leg, they are easy to detect, said Dorn, because the violator can't bend his knee.

Other signs that a bus rider is concealing weapons or drugs, which often go hand-in-hand, are in the dynamics of human behavior and clues outside the school bus. Tennis shoes hung over power lines indicating a drug area or gang activity near a bus stop are indicators of what situations could board the school bus along with the children. Once kids are on the bus, drivers should take note of those riders who regularly stake out the back of the bus.

Some problems are regional, said Dorn, such as crystal meth, which is "raging" in certain areas of the country but declining in others like Oklahoma , which was hit hard by the drug early on but has since seen tremendous success through prevention programs.

Methamphetamine use has risen to the level of an epidemic and is affordable to school age children since $20 to $60 can buy a high for up to 12 hours, said Stefan Salmonson, a deputy sheriff in Minnesota and president of PROtective Services, Inc.

Behind the wheel, school bus drivers are in a position to detect both drug use on the bus and the location of meth houses in surrounding neighborhoods, Salmonson said. Kids also leave behind clues that they are abusing methamphetamines on the bus. Discarded tin foil and rubber hosing, needles, light bulbs, postage-size glossy magazine paper folded in on itself, apples and green bananas are all used to smoke, snort, and inject the drug. Other indicators of abuse include fingertip burns and paranoia.

"There is so much to talk about," Salmonson said. "We've only scratched the surface."

He sited 10 environmental factors that call attention to meth houses if a driver is trained to recognize them. Included in the list are: atypical odors, such as painter thinner or gasoline; gates and signage to keep out trespassers; electronic driveway monitoring; excessive window coverings; burning pits or barrels; oxidization of metal surfaces, such as storm doors, and the use of chains and padlocks; cigarette butts 20 to 40 feet away from the front door, modified containers used to haul anhydrous ammonia, such as large fire extinguishers or gas cans; lack of vegetation; and surveillance camera equipment.

"Awareness is probably our most cost effective method," Salmonson said. "The best awareness is going to come from a course that teaches them practical, extremely specific information."

The next step, both from a safety as well as a liability standpoint, is to have a plan of action if a violation or dangerous occurs. To this end, Safe Havens International and PROtective Services Inc. both offer extensive training programs to school officials. Safe Havens also has free weapons and drug awareness tutorials on its Web site, www.safehavensinternational.com .

The most effective approach, Dorn and Salmonson agreed, is for the school transportation department to work in conjunction with other school officials and local law enforcement as part of a school wide plan. Bus drivers, Salmonson said, should be aware, empowered, equipped to safely report either a weapon or drug problem.

"You are negligent if you fail to train your drivers on weapons screening," Dorn said. "We don't put out a bus with bad tires or brakes. We could not send a driver out there without training."

Source: School Transportation News, May 2006. All rights reserved.