The Park City Police Department conducts canine searches from time to time. They schedule them under the coordination of the school district and use the Summit County Sheriff’s canine resources. They did a search on Monday with the dog teams in the high school parking lot and school lockers. Carolyn Murray has this:
The Park City Police Department randomly deploys the canine team to search for drugs on school property. Phil Kirk is a captain with the Park City Police Department. He said the dogs detected vape pens in two vehicles in the parking lot at the high school.
“It was actually just a regular scheduled one that we have. Again, coordination under the coordination o the school district. We did find some vape pens that has been a problem as we know. And, this canine search indicates this continues to be a problem. We are still investigating whether for tobacco or drugs and we’re thinking it is a combination of both. That’s one of the problems with these vape pens is it can be used for either tobacco or marijuana. And, we think that’s the case in this situation but we’re still investigating it."
Kirk said when they conduct a search it’s under the request of the school district. He said he hopes these methods discourage students from bringing drugs to school. They did not find any drugs anywhere on the school grounds. But the vaping devices found in two vehicles remain under investigation to determine if they were used for tobacco or illegal drugs.
“Our goal is to you know not have to do enforcement but to discourage violations of the law either from drugs in the school to trying to detect vehicle break-ins which have been continuing unfortunately in Park City and Summit County."
In this case, they had 3 dogs with their handlers. They try to minimize the disruption, but the dogs do attract attention.
“The students are primarily in their classes and we’re searching out primarily the lockers when they’re int heir classes and outside in the parking lot while they’re in school. I believe they notify their faculty what is transpiring so they’re not surprised. When Summit County is available, they do have a canine team. Other times when they’re not available, we’ll go to the state, the Department of Public Safety and go through them. It varies but usually we try to go through Summit County.”
Students should anticipate that law enforcement will be using canine searches regularly.
“We didn’t find any drugs and that’s typically the case and that’s good that that’s the outcome on this. Hopefully, these canine searches and other methods we use at the schools prevent that from happening and discourage students from bringing drugs to school.”
Kirk asks the public to be vigilant right now. There are multiple car break-ins that have occurred in Prospector, at Quinn’s Junction and Redstone. They are under investigation and they continue undercover work to catch the criminals involved. KPCW will keep listeners up to date as details become available.
