COMMENTARY\School policing views are heavy-handed.

Byline: Donald J. Hunt Special to the Daily News

Richard Green's March 17 commentary column in the Daily News endorsing the idea of bringing police K-9 units onto Simi Valley public school campuses is surprisingly incomplete in naming the sources Green uses in drawing his conclusions. It is disturbingly presumptive in the assertions it contains, and it is sadly inaccurate in its portrayal of some of the statements I wrote in a March 3 commentary.

Green cites media depictions of a drug problem of epidemic proportions in our public schools. The danger in using the media as a source to justify intrusive police action should be obvious, especially to a career police officer, as was Mr. Green. The media have consistently portrayed police officers as too often brutish, too quick to ignore the rule of law they are sworn to uphold, and too frequently inclined to profit illegally in the course of their work. I don't accept the media as gospel, and neither should Green.

"Studies reveal that not just the numbers but the age spectrum is becoming younger . . . " Green wrote. What studies? Tell us the sources of these studies, so that we can verify them ourselves. The anecdote of a junior high student giving his girlfriend $1,100 in alleged drug proceeds is meaningless. Without some means of confirming the incident, there is no reason to accept it as gospel either, and if it could be verified, one incident does not constitute an epidemic.

Equally meaningless in this situation is Mr. Green's reliance on "reasonable cause" vs. "probable cause." In the scenario proposed to the Simi Valley school board, the police dogs, 10 at a time, would be brought onto campus as a training exercise for the K-9 units. Students would be transformed from those who learn into those who are used to teach. Students will be little more than training objects for the dogs, and probable or even reasonable cause would not exist without the dogs' presence.

Case law is not clear on this issue, and there is a variety of organizations waiting for a test case. With the Simi district's dismal history in court, board member Diane Collins was right in expressing her concern that our district could become the precedent cited hereafter. How many lawsuits will this district lose or settle out of court before its officials learn to stop exposing themselves needlessly to the risk of litigation?

Green erred in his claim that I wrote that police do not "adjudicate instances in which contraband was recovered from a student's locker." (That means that the cops prosecute when they find dope.) At the board meetings it was clearly stated that the police would not be present when any of the lockers are opened, and would not take any legal action based on what the dogs identify. I have no doubt that police generally prosecute based on evidence they find. I did not make the statement that they wouldn't - the police themselves did.

An additional error made by Mr. Green is contained in his statement that the dogs would not be unpopular with students. Several students spoke at both board meetings, and I'm sure many will return for the final vote on the issue, to voice their opposition again. Bringing these dogs onto campus is not popular with those students, and assuming that those who did not speak are in support is simply an assumption.

More attention to this issue would have served Green well. He is apparently under the mistaken impression that the dogs in question are trained in detecting narcotics and nothing more. That's not the case. All of these dogs are trained primarily as law enforcement animals, and they are used only secondarily to detect drugs. They are, in fact, the dogs used to apprehend suspects when it's too dangerous to send in police officers. They are quite capable of biting, and are trained to do so under certain circumstances. They are the "popularized canine detail," they're large and powerful, and if they bite a student they are capable of inflicting severe injuries whether the student deserves it or not.

Green states that objecting to an occupying force of 10 large police dogs and their handlers, accompanied by police commanders and school administrators, would be " . . . analogous to a position that police patrol cars are offensive in our communities because we are not all criminally involved." That analogy does not work. A far more accurate one would be to claim that because there are drugs in our community, and there certainly are, police officers should have the authority to drive their cars 10 at a time into private driveways and garages and search the homes of all of us. That is not acceptable, and neither should it be to use such a heavy hand on the young people of this community.

Green is a retired LAPD captain and the retired chief of the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department. I have little doubt that his years of seeing things through the eyes of a police officer have jaded his vision. As a friend of mine commented, we expect cops to be cops, but what we do not expect is that public school board members and administrators should become cops. And we should all be offended at the idea of turning every student in this school district into a suspect.