Dog day at police headquarters

The relationship among the North Bay Police Service and local school boards will soon be going to the dogs, and that’s the way Chief Paul Cook wants it.

Cook and education directors from French and English public and Catholic boards are meeting to try to create a canine protocol that would see Ontario Provincial Police dogs used to check schools for drugs.

“As a police service we’re trying to take proactive steps along with the directors of education to enforce the zero tolerance policy for schools as it relates to substance abuse,” Cook said Tuesday following a meeting of the North Bay Police Services Board.

“And we’re hoping to have a protocol in place whereby a school official would be able to contact the police to do things like sweeps of hallways whether it be after school or during class hours, and again those are some of the discussion we’re having, so we’ll see how this plays out.”

Not acceptable behaviour
Substance abuse and trafficking on school property are becoming serious problems, Cook said.

“So anything we can do to stop people from trafficking within our schools and get the message out to all students that this is a zero tolerance matter, that it’s not acceptable behaviour, will benefit everybody and benefits our community,” Cook said.

“I see it as being a partnership where we can lend support to one another because certainly we’re going to have to have school officials making the initial calls that we’ll have to follow up on.”

Police and board officials meet again May 18 to discuss the matter.