Tuesday, January 31, 2006

DARE bites

Yet another DARE disaster:

NEW ALBANY, Ind. -- Courtney McGarry had a day at school that she will never forget.

“Well, they brought in a DARE dog and they were showing us how it sniffs out drugs,” she describes. “He had kids like petting it and it just snapped and it bit me in the face.”

It was just after a police demonstration at Hazelwood Elementary. The sixth graders were in the classroom.

“I was scared to death,” says her mother, Michelle McGarry. “I can't believe they let a dog in school like that.”

“This is what I would classify as a typical demonstration that school resource officers and police departments do for students to show students how dogs handle searches,” says New Albany Assistant Superintendent Tony Bennett. “The dog wasn’t searching kids or searching the school, it was strictly there for the presentation, so it was very much under control.”

Oh yeah, really "under control..."

But even in light of this terrible tragedy, little Courtney says she doesn't want the dog put down because of its behavior.

But it is way past time to put DARE to sleep.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She's just lucky she touched the dog and not the cop.

Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to know if the dog had been a reject from the K-9 attack school and recycled into a 'drug dog'. After you warp an animal's miniscule mind with attack training, I'd only trust it depending upon both it's distance from me and how well I can shoot...

Anonymous said...

By the way Hazelwood is a middle school not an elementary school. FYI.