Sparta Police Internship Week 5 (6/4-6/8)

This week I was riding with patrol again. Monday was a pretty quiet day, the only thing that came up was a warrant on a gentlemen who wasn't paying child support so we drove to his apartment complex to make an arrest but he wasn't home. On Wednesday we came in early because we were going to conduct a drug search at the Sparta High School at 8:20am. Before we wen't to the high school the detectives had me read the rules on performing a drug search with K-9s. For example, if the dog does detect drugs in a students locker the police cannot simply open the locker and rummage through it. The police need to acquire a warrant or get consent from the student's parents in order to access the students locker. The Sparta police were working with the New Jersey State Police, the Sussex County Sheriffs Office, and the administration of the high school. When the search began the school went into a lock down so that no one would leave the class rooms, we had two dogs that would search different parts of the school such as class rooms, locker rooms, lockers, etc. The dogs suspected 3 lockers but once the warrant was obtained and the lockers were searched, no drugs were found, the was rolling paper in one locker but you can't make an arrest on that. The search was a great way for me to see just how the dogs worked, and also to see how the different departments work together in order to make this search work, it took a lot of cooperation between the police and the school but this was a great way to build relations with the police and the community. On Friday I rode with patrol officer Adam Carbery and we responded to a car accident in which an elderly woman backed out of her drive way and went down a hill and was pinned in her car so we had to get her out of the other door. She wasn't injured. We also responded to a house fire in which these kids turned the oven on and they were storing towels in the oven and they burst into flames, no damage was done besides some burnt towels. I was able to get some good insight from officer Carbery on the military and how that plays a factor into being hired by a police dept. He's an ex army vet and since I have an interest in the Army Reserve I was able to get a lot of info from him.