On Friday, Evangeline Parish Schools experienced a sweep for drugs involving an outside law enforcement agency who did a search of campus with K-9 dogs.
The drill, according to Evangeline Parish School Board President Wayne Dardeau, was to “try to keep kids safe by getting the drugs out of our schools.”
However, since the search, Pine Prairie Police Chief L.C. Deshotel shared a release to clarify that his department had no involvement in the K-9 search and was unaware that it was taking place.
In the chief’s release, it states, “On February 23, 2018, my office received calls from concerned parents about why Pine Prairie High School was on lockdown and no law enforcement was present.”
According to the release, when officers “attempted to make contact with the school, they did not get an answer from the school.” The release went on to state that the Evangeline Parish 9-1-1 Office was also “contacted and they did not know of any lockdown situation.”
According to Dardeau, the reason why no one was made aware of the searches that were performed at schools across the parish was because “when you tell people, word gets around and students find out.”
Dardeau, who said he did not know about the drug dogs being used until Friday morning, said that he is “happy” with the superintendent’s decision to bring the K-9 dogs in because “we don’t want drugs in our schools.”
In the release from Chief Deshotel; though, it states that after his department received calls regarding a lockdown, “officers responded to the school as if there was a real threat and were met by school officials stating that the Evangeline Parish School Board did a lockdown and sent in K-9 dogs from an unknown agency into the school.”
The reason why an outside agency was used, according to Dardeau, is because “no local law enforcement agencies in Evangeline Parish have drug dogs.”
Dardeau said, “The outside agency that comes in with their dogs has the capability of searching multiple schools at once, which is what we need. If we do one school one day and another school a different day, then students end up finding out that it’s going to happen. If our local agencies had enough drug dogs, then the school board could use local law enforcement for the searches instead of having to pay an outside agency for that service.”
These types of searches are something that Dardeau also said can be expected in the future.
He concluded, “This is being done all over the state, because it is necessary to keep drugs out of our schools; and, this is something that will continue to be done at our schools at random times.”
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ELIZABETH WEST