Todd Bensman

TESTS FIND HEROIN, COCAINE, PCP IN DALLAS SCHOOLS

EXPERT: "I'M FINDING DRUGS ARE ALL OVER THE PLACE."

Dec 2, 2004 4:06 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman
Investigative Producer
CBS-11 News

The seventh and eighth graders at DISD's Florence Middle School knew it as "The Love Nest," a private corner niche on campus where kids could feel safe from the prying eyes of tattle-tales and teachers.

Students in the know would climb a remote stairwell that led to a small enclosed space on the fourth floor, featuring only an air vent and a locked door to a rooftop. In that spot stood a chair that would enable a short person to stand up and reach a hole broken in the ceiling tile. It was along the edges of the ceiling hole and stairwell railings that a scarcely known pilot program to test for illegal drugs found traces of heroin, cocaine, PCP, marijuana, amphetamines and designer drugs like ecstasy.

What exactly had been going on at the "Love Nest"? and how it got its name, fell into the category of unsubstantiated schoolhouse lore until an Irving-based company called Trace Detection Services showed up on campus with a device said to accurately measure the presence of the most microscopic of drug particles. School officials quietly erected sturdy steel gates essentially locking up the Love Nest.

But the traces of highly dangerous drugs found at Florence Middle School were hardly unique among seven Middle and High schools that were quietly tested over the past six months. Swipes run through the company's machine, which incorporates the same technology used at the nation's airports to detect explosives, generated significant numbers of "hits" for illegal narcotics of the most dangerous kinds on student lockers, on desks, in classrooms, in counselors' offices and in janitorial closets at all seven schools checked as part of a pilot program.

CBS-11 News obtained te st results under the Texas Public Information Act.

"I have found on some lockers four drugs on a set of lockers. It might be heroin, it might be cocaine, it might be THC (marijuana), and it might be ephedrine," said Gary Pfeltz, the company's president. "I'm finding that drugs are all over the place."

Because of those alarming drug trace results, DISD officials have administratively approved a $50,000 contract for Trace Detection Services to test 46 campuses. Pheltz notes that discoveries of trace particles of illegal drugs do not always indicate that the person whose desk or locker was tested actually used them on campus. The findings mainly indicate, to various degrees, the extent to which a person came in physical contact with illegal drugs, perhaps a car seat or at home or by actually using drugs, and then transferred the particles by coming in contact with objects on campuses.

Among the pilot program findings, according to records and interviews:

-- The discovery of both heroin and marijuana traces in close proximity at many of the campuses may indicate the growing use of a heroin-laced marijuana cigarette known on the streets as an "A-Bomb."
--Drug use apparently is common on elevated auditorium cat walks. Reached by ladder high above auditorium stages, cat walks offer an excellent area for drug abuse. The elevated platforms or ramps are virtually hidden from view and present an extremely dangerous environment for a student under the influence of drugs." Positive tests for illegal drugs at Samuel High School were so pervasive that district officials quietly blocked ladders up.
-- At increasing rates, students may be raiding their parents?? medicine cabinets of legal prescription drugs not intended for children.
--Marijuana is still a top drug of choice, judging by test indicators, followed closely by cocaine, heroin, designer drugs such as ecstasy, amphetamines and valium.

Pfeltz said district officials have no interest in testing campuses to catch students in the act or embarrass anyone, but rather to collect the first-ever empirical data about what kinds of illegal drugs are being brought onto school campuses. With such information in hand, the district hopes to tailor prevention and intervention programs before moving to the last resort - enforcement, according to records offering a rationale for trace analysis.

District officials also hope to use the tests to evaluate a longtime federal prevention program called Safe and Drug Free Schools, which provides federal grant money to DISD.

The project is the brainchild of DISD Chief of Security Manuel Vasquez, who referred questions to district spokesman Donny Claxton. The program comes at a time of spiking incidents of violent crime on campuses, a noticeable rise in gang activity and public calls for innovative responses to those problems.

Although it has been under way for many months, the trace analysis program has not been publicized.

"We are not going to hide our head in the sands over this," Claxton said in response to a CBS-11 interview request last week. "We are going to find what's in the building, find solutions to curbing the use and get kids help."

Pfeltz said his machine is accurate to within a minute fraction of a percent. It could detect, for instance, the equivalent of a packet of sugar in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Pfeltz's workers typically work their way through a school rubbing lockers, desks and walls with small white gauze pads. The pads are then run through the $40,000 machine, which produces a reading.

He has set the degree of significance at a .50 level known as two touches removed. This means a person who touches a person or object that came in direct contact with drugs, and then transfers the particles independently would score at least a .50 on Pfeltz's machine. Anyone who directly touched illegal drugs, then transferred the particles to a foreign object would score a "significant" 1.0 alarm.

In this way, Pfeltz and district officials ha ve discovered scores ranging from the .5 minimum threshold to as high as 3.0 virtually all over the tested campuses.

Pfeltz found no shortage of alarm-level hits. At Spruce High School, for instance, heroin registered 18 drug alerts in December 2003, and marijuana registered a dozen.

"There is a possibility that the marijuana is laced with heroin. The street term for such a drug cocktail is A-Bomb," the Spruce drug assessment summary states.

At Hood Middle School, "marijuana appears to be the drug of choice," although traces of cocaine, heroin and valium also showed up on lockers, in bathrooms and in classrooms, the school's December 2003 assessment report states. Those results came despite as testers encountered a vigorous school-wide cleansing campaign by the janitorial staff that involved waxing and cleaning desks, chairs and walls.

At Samuel High School, heroin showed up more times than any other illegal drug, registering 16 alerts.

"The administration of Samuel High School locked the student lockers,?? the school??s drug assessment summary states. "Since access to these storage facilities is denied, they were not assessed."

Trace testing is a relatively new phenomenon. But it is not unknown in North Texas. For the past three years, the Coppell Independent School District has used Pfeltz's services. Records show that Pfeltz most often gets few to no alarms for drugs at Coppell High School, where the program is focused.

Dr. Paul Lupia, who heads the district??s office of student affairs, said the testing program, and monthly visits by police with trained dogs, have a powerful deterrent effect on students.

"We found areas that the dogs could not cover, for example," he said. "We had areas in the school that were up above the floor level and the dogs of course can??t do that."

It's unclear at this early stage what the state's second largest school district plans to do with the data it collects over the next year. Gates and barriers have already bee n installed due just to what the pilot program uncovered.

The Love Nest is no more, as a result, and neither is at least one auditorium catwalk.

"We want to know what??s in a building,? the district??s spokesman, Claxton said. "So that the principals and law enforcement can take appropriate steps, so we can work outside that building with DPD and other law enforcement agencies to help curb the traffic that's coming in to the building."