Memorial High School - Reata Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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Dope dog hound abusers Headlinewise, it was a three-dog year. For Memorial High and the surrounding community the biggest running news story involved the efforts of the Hedwig Village Police Department to employ a dog to sniff out marijuana. First came Romel, a German Shepherd pot hound for whose purchase and training a parent-sponsored group calling itself Community Drug Detection and Control, Inc., had put up Sl0,000. The idea was that Romel, under the could track fugitives, control crowds, ferret out burglars and disarm pistoleros - provided he got the proper commands in Spanish. Then along came the C.D.D.C. with its interesting project and the Academy set out to add pot-sniffing to Romel's list of skills. While Romel was being programmed for marijuana detection, The Anvil interviewed Billy Smith, the Academy's general manager and chief trainer, and found him cautiously optimistic that the dog's higher education would prove a success. The reason for his optimism, he said, Uwas that next to eating, the thing a dog likes to do best is sniff around - especially if the sniffing involves a playful game. lf a dog is going to pursue a career in drug detection, said Smith in the manner of a high school senior counselor, he must Presentation ofthe anti-drug program led by Student Council President Hank Duke with Village Police Captain loe Shultea and Officer Charles Bra wner, the dog's trainer, interested all students. guiding leash of Village Police Officer C. A. Brawner, would prowl the corridors and parking areas of junior and senior high schools of the Spring Branch Independent School District with a nose finely tuned to detect the presence of grass As things turned out, Romel was a huge bust- but not the kind of bust the C.D.D.C. had intended. The problem was that no matter how hard his trainers tried to educate him, Romel didn't know his grass from a hole in the ground. Basically the difficulty had to do with teaching an old dog new tricks. Originally trained as an attack guard at Houston's Southwestern Police Dog Academy, for use by the Mexican Government in police work south of the border, Romel was a self- contained four-legged S.W.A.T. team. He 20 SPECIAL ESSAY- ROMEL have the desire to sniff, and he must love to have fun. We cultivate the dog's natural instincts and if he doesn't enjoy this kind of work, I don't believe in force-training him. Billy Smith twho personally prefers gentle Labrador Retrievers for drug detectionj said that any dog could be taught to find pot. He proved this by teaching the skill to a tiny chihuahua and his personal German Shepherd Heidi. Alas, the chihuahua passed on - Heidi ate him. Meanwhile, Officer Brawner was in training also, learning how to be Romel's friend, companion and confidante. Since the dog's notion of good clean fun was tearing people's arms off at the socket, Brawner was concentrating mainly on not being eaten alive. He too was optimistic about the pot project.

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Dr. H. M. Landrum gives information about the new superin- tendent, Dr, Leo Bradley, to studentpress members. 222 is Si Sk SEQ QS SVT .E 55- Q ff? sa me Egg it seg iii? is it iii, 135 Qi gi? -55 is if 229 EEE EEE ii 4232 Q22 rf? iv sf? its 555 Lis ES iii L52 tg, Si 635 gi? 5252 ist it 522 is it 2555 122 :ex az E8 SVS 35 its? ga at its E, Q is xiii is 5325 3225 53? its its ii is E Q55 tt sz fx aa 223 is: SSE W 152 iss QQ? sri EY LES? is Z! E22 Wi A La ES? fig ig: xg Q? S55 Si? 45 ti '52 gi ggi fxgx iii? 2,354 45 .L as Ak gs is Iii 5 t its 3515 is- SQ? 536 is ga? aa as 3? W, is 2? gs QS 525 is is ig E. S2 is 5222 Sgt LHS? E25 si At a press Conference held for all the SBISD sfhools, Dr. H. M. Landrum and Coordinator for Information Services Mary Kay Coleman, explain the details of his resignation to stu- Retiring superintendent Dr. H. M. Landrum reminisces about his 34 years spent as head ofthe district, Left: After a hard search led by School Board President Arthur Leblanc, Dr, Leo Bradley signs a Contract as new superintendent. SPECIAL ESSAY - SUPERINTENDENTS -

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As far as this department is concerned, he said, Romel is a police officer. Romel is not afraid of any weapon. ln fact, it will agitate the dog even more if he sees a weapon. He'll go for whichever hand the weapon is in. Course, most of the time I'm going to be pretty close to Romelf' As things rocked along, the newspaper and TV news programs got pretty close to Romel also, reporting on how effective stand-in Heidi was at finding drugs. There was a big local play of the story, and the wire services and TV networks made Romel famous elsewhere as well. As the authorities had anticipated, there was some kind of awful public uproar. Principally it came from parents who believed that the presence of a trained attack dog on school premises was a clear danger to their offspring. Amid the outcries of alarm, the prestigious American Civil Liberties Union weighed in with a dire prediction of its own If Romel harmed so much as a hair on any student s head the A C L U would go for the school district s throat with every legal means at its command Clearly this meant the case could be pushed all the way to the U S Supreme Court if necessary The on campus reaction to Romel was just as heated Among the weed head set cries of pig dog and dog pig hung inthe air like marijuana vapor There were high minded growls from seniors among whom Memorial s course in Government never fails to kindle civic passions Some who were taking the course wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne style essays with convoluted sentences and paragraphs protesting the police state atmosphere they claimed was detrimental to the sacred learning process Poor old Romel While the storm swirled about his unsuspecting head he was simply trying to do his doggy duty and not getting the hang of it at all During his initial training he had learned that the word Gotcha meant instantF Every time he d choose a morsel of sirloin steak over a marijuana joint Billy Smith would holler that shameful word and Romel would look crestfallen In the end he scored too many Gotchas and flunked the course which may have been not too shameful considering that according to Billy Smith only one out of 800 is capable of learning police and drug work Uvlaybe Romel wasn t so dumb after all He did manage to zero in on a flot of yummy sirloin steak j So the Academy packed him off to Mexico where he was originally supposed to have gone anyway And for the drug sniffing project it was a Return to Go do not collect S200 Then entered drug sniffing candidate No 3 a 20 month old German Shepherd named Bogart as in Humphrey Once again the users of marijuana had to worry about being told Gotcha' and Romel ll was on his way' BY MARK SNELL SPECIAL ESSAY ROMEL 2'l