K9’s to sniff-out drugs, guns at Soledad Unified Schools

SOLEDAD, Calif. (KION-TV) - Drug-sniffing canines are coming to schools in Soledad.

This school year, specially-trained dogs will be making regular, unannounced visits to campuses across the Soledad Unified School District.

“She is trained to find all illegal drugs. Marijuana, ecstasy, methamphetamine and stuff like that. Even fentanyl,” said Julia Ford with Proactive K9's.

The dogs can also detect the presence of alcohol and gunpowder.

"I'll have her sit. Good. Sit. And then I'm just going to command her to start sniffing. And whenever she finds something that she's trained to find, she will sit. So I can show that to you now," Ford said whilst guiding the dog.

"It’s just a nine millimeter bullet and so and even though it's incased the dogs are still able to smell that small amount of gunpowder."

They’re not police dogs, but come from a private company called Proactive K9s, which said the dogs are non-aggressive.

Students were introduced to the program during assemblies on Tuesday.

“It was pretty friendly, like it was doing like tricks and stuff. It didn’t seem that intimidating at all,” said senior Jose Perez.

The dogs won’t be sniffing students themselves. They will only stick to empty classrooms, lockers and locker rooms, and parking lots.

“We also hear the voices about wanting to make sure this is not overbearing or intimidating for students and we absolutely want that to be the case,” said Superintendent Randy Bangs.

Last school year, in March, somebody scribbled a threat of a school shooting at Soledad High, and the vast majority of students didn’t show up to school the next day.

Perez said dogs being able to sniff out a gun brings him some peace.

“I feel safer. You know students can bring like really dangerous stuff like guns and stuff, and they were talking about that,like how a student brought a gun and the dog sniffed it out.”