By Shawn Hogendorf, Correspondent 

Citations were issued to two Prior Lake High School students after an unannounced drug sweep was conducted on the school campus the day before Halloween.

No narcotics or contraband were found inside the school on Oct. 30, but K-9 drug dogs did alert Dakota County Drug Task Force agents to a number of vehicles in the parking lot, according to Capt. Dave Muelken. In all, more than 10 vehicles were searched, but narcotics were only located in two.

As a result, an 18-year-old student from Prior Lake was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. A 17-year-old student from Prior Lake was cited for possession of tobacco, possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In other situations where the K-9 teams were alerted to the odor of narcotics, the students were called out of class and their vehicles were searched – but no contraband was found. Muelken said those students did admit there was marijuana in or smoked inside those vehicles in the recent past.

“This is a preventative search, not a response to suspected or known activity,” Muelken said. “There is a zero-tolerance policy for controlled substances, alcohol and tobacco on school property and our department will assist the school however we can to prevent the presence of these substances on school grounds.”

The drug-sniffing dogs are trained to alert officers when the odor of drugs is detected, but citations are only issued if there is a presence of drugs or tobacco in the vehicles or lockers. If banned substances are located, police confiscate them. The dogs are brought through the school and student parking lot at the school’s request.

In this sweep, four drug dogs were used while police and drug task force agents assisted school staff members in the search of vehicles.

“This is fairly common as to what we find when these sweeps have been conducted in the past,” Muelken said. “Issuing citations to two people is not unusual – it is not zero, but it is not 10.”

The idea behind the drug sweeps is to send the message that illegal substances are not tolerated on school campus, said Assistant Principal Jeff Pawlicki. There is not a set number of sweeps that the school requests each year, but they are done more than once depending on the availability of the police department and the drug task force.