Memorial High School - Reata Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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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

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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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Heidi's work revealed tothe nation Heidi the Wonderdog, reigned in splendor over the auditorium full of nonbelievers. Visions of glory played on her imagination as cameras faded in and out and clicked away at her. The brilliant lights shone on her lustrous coat and reflected from her sparkling teeth. Go to work, Heidi. Find that dope, commanded Officer Charles Brawner with friendly authority. All attention turned toward her, this was the moment of reckoning. Yet, Heidi knew it was cleverly hidden in that lonely book on the middle of the stage. A cameraman and sound technician jumped on stage for a close-up ofthe fabulous dope sniffing German Shepherd. Lights were adjusted, cameras were focused, and breath was held. Then she did it. Heidi walked right across the stage, up to the book , . .and sniffed at ll. Officer Charles Brawner beamed a happy smile and quickly produced a tennis ball from under his arm as a reward. He then bent down, opened up the book and pulled out a baggie full of marijuana, which he exhibited to the crowd, Heidi the Wonderdog, had done it again, only this time for NBC national news and right on the stage of the auditorium. Most of the students knew what the assembly was about before they made it to the auditorium, but the bright lights and cameras caught almost all by surprise. The actual assembly included a guest appearance by Village Police Captain loe Shultea and a demonstration by Heidi and Officer Brawner. A short question and answer period then gave the students a chance to be immortalized on film in front ofa national audience. On the way out, one had to ponder why Memorial was selected to pioneer the anti- drug program. The average student had to wonder if there was more going on behind the scenes than he was aware of. Reactions to the assembly were as varied as reactions to the program itself. Most students agreed there was some merit to the program. Yet, they had to decide for themselves whether the whole thing was really a friendly guiding hand or an authoritative show of power. Memorial again gained national recognition, only this time not for an outstanding swim team, journalism program or academic excellence, this time it was for trying lo stop a supposedly serious drug traffic problem on campus. - BY TODD BUCHANAN ZZ SPECIAL ESSAY- NBC NEWS l ws. fm. NHC stall members are greeted by Principal Wayne Scnaper upon arrival lor filming. Below: NHC uses intricate technical equipment when they lilm the nationally televised anti-drug Dfllgffllfl. ' Q I