Lockdown Drill/Narcotics Search Conducted At NHS

School officials and town police conducted an exercise at Newtown High School on the morning of Thursday, May 26, that combined a school “lockdown” drill with a police dog search of school parking lots for illegal drugs in vehicles, police said in a statement.

In such lockdown drills, students are kept locked in their classrooms to practice the safety measures that they would take in the event of certain emergencies at the school.

Newtown police said that police dog handlers from Newtown, Stratford, Easton, and Monroe used their dogs to externally search numerous vehicles parked in school parking lots for the presence of illicit drugs. In such cases, the dogs, which are trained to detect the presence of certain drugs, physically indicate to their handlers that they smelled such substances.

An unspecified number of vehicles that the dogs indicated might hold drugs were searched by police in the presence of the students who had driven those vehicles to school, police said.

Police said they made no arrests for narcotics possession.

However, one vehicle was found to contain alcohol, police said. The student who drove that vehicle to school was issued an infraction ticket for illegal possession of alcohol by a minor, a violation that carries a $136 fine, police said.

Because the youth who received that violation is under age 18, the youth’s identity is shielded from disclosure by state law.