Students cap Red Ribbon Week with DEA demonstrations
Orcutt students received a valuable lesson to wrap up Red Ribbon Week: Cops are people, too.
The students were treated to hands-on displays from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department K-9 unit and the USDA Forest Service, which included a helicopter fly-in.
Along with all of the Red Ribbon Week messages, the special agents and officers wanted the students to realize that they, too, were once school kids faced with the same pressures and decisions.
“All of Red Ribbon Week is all about saying no to drugs, but we wanted to show the people in the business and show that they are friends,” said Alan Majewski, principal at Orcutt Junior High and Academy High School. “The one thing we want to do was show them in the best light we could.”
Mission accomplished.
DEA special agents Talbot and Nielsen showed students the tools of their trade. The agents brought a surveillance van, filled with equipment they use during drug raids.
Talbot suited up groups of a half-dozen students to form raid squads in armored vest and shields and armed them with picks and rams, used to break down doors at suspected drug houses.
The agency also flew in a helicopter to the junior high soccer field.
“One of the reasons we’re out here today is about making health choices when it comes to drugs,” Nielsen said. “It’s always a little more difficult to do that when one of your friends might offer (drugs).”
Nielsen told the students that it happened to him when he was their age, and if he hadn’t made the right choices, he wouldn’t be a DEA agent today.
The DEA has offices in all 50 states and 26 countries, he added, telling students he can basically work wherever he would like.
Two of the most popular visitors were sheriff’s deputy Mike McNeil and his best friend, Betti, a police dog.
Betti was a big hit with the kids, showing them her agility, her drug-sniffing ability and her tenacity. The 5-year-old German shepherd is trained in both drug location and urban tracking, McNeil said.
Betti is trained to locate methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and opium, McNeil told the students as his pooch found a methamphetamine training pouch hidden under a traffic cone. Betti also can track a subject across grass, an open field, as well as across concrete and asphalt surfaces.
She is one of three dogs in the county sheriff’s department and McNeil said he is lucky to call Betti his partner.
Don Hoang, Curtis Davis and Grand Ealy are Forest Service Law Enforcement officers. Ealy works out of the Santa Barbara office. Davis is from Monterey County.
Hoang works in the Santa Maria office and was front and center for the La Brea Fire operation, a blaze that was started by workers at a marijuana grow.
Forest Service Law Enforcement has become increasingly active in recent years because of marijuana grows on public property and backcountry drug labs. In addition to drug crimes, the service also works arson cases and any other crimes on federal forest land.
“I think this shows how important public jobs are to everyone,” said Orcutt eighth-grader Lester Valenzuela. “It shows how important these people are to us.”
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