CAPE SCHOOLS LIKE DRUG-, GUN-FREE SIGNS DESPITE RULING

Even though they are only about half true, schools still want "Drug Free, Gun Free" signs posted.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Price got a request a few months ago from a school, so he pulled up a sign near old Notre Dame High School at Ritter Drive and Caruthers Street. Price is keeping it at home until he decides with the school on the best place to put it.

The yellow and black signs posted near some schools that warn the area is free of guns and drugs serve a purpose, although the message is not entirely accurate, Price said.

"It's still a deterrent to have the signs, although the gun part is unconstitutional," Price said.

Laws don't limit gun possession within 1,000 feet of a school as the signs suggest. But this was their original intention.

A series of gun laws enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1990 included the Gun-Free School Zones Act. It encouraged federal, state and local authorities to post the signs around school zones.

The first such signs were put up in Cape Girardeau by the Noon Optimists Club with free labor provided by the city in 1992, Price said.

Neither county nor federal prosecutors had a chance to test the gun prohibition in an actual court case before 1995, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the gun limitation was unconstitutional.

But various state statutes and municipal rules on guns do place limits on firearms around schools.

Statutes say that no guns may be carried into a school, courthouse, church, election precinct or government building, said Morley Swingle, Cape Girardeau County prosecuting attorney.

No one has ever been prosecuted for carrying a gun into any building in the county, and Swingle has only dealt with one case of discharging a gun within 100 yards of a church.

Shots fired across a road, a class B misdemeanor, has been prosecuted several times, he said.

City ordinances would allow an unconcealed, unloaded gun within close proximity of a school, said police officer Barry Hovis, the school resource officer at Central High School and Junior High. However, school officials still might ask someone displaying a weapon to leave school grounds, Hovis said.

If a person refused, then police would be able to make an arrest for trespassing, he said.

Any concealed guns would constitute a crime, although Hovis said a firearm locked in a car trunk might not.

Municipal rules would likely allow someone to carry an unloaded gun in a non-threatening manner on school grounds, Hovis said. However, the school's zero-tolerance policy on guns probably wouldn't.

"It wouldn't be a criminal case, but it's breaking a school administrative rule," Hovis said.

The anti-drug message on signs near schools works more clearly. Swingle has used the signs' influence often.

"We usually get some idiot selling drugs from his house across the street from a school," the prosecutor said.

The 1,000-foot perimeter for drugs was aimed more toward drug dealers selling in school parking lots, Swingle said, but it has assisted in reducing trials and getting guilty pleas. Few defendants want to face stricter charges for selling drugs near a school, so they will usually agree to plead guilty to a lesser drug crime, he said.

Instances of either drugs or guns found at schools have been lower than last year, Hovis said.

A few weeks ago, a student reported seeing someone carrying ammunition for a gun in a pack back. Police searched the junior high and only found some cartridges in a bathroom, said police officer Rob Barker.

"We looked in false ceilings and other places, making a pretty thorough search," Barker said. "It didn't interrupt the educational process at all."

Only one person has been arrested this year for selling narcotics at school, Hovis said. Derrick M. Moore, 18, pleaded guilty last week to a class A felony of delivery of a controlled substance near a school. He will be sentenced March 27.

A few students have been caught under the influence of drugs, but no drugs have been found at schools, Hovis said. "That's because either there are no drugs here, their not bringing them to school, or we're not finding them," he said.

Police have been consistent with bringing drug-sniffing dogs into schools this year, and Hovis has spoken in classes about laws impacting narcotics use.

Junior-high principal Gerald Richards is glad to have the "Gun Free, Drug Free" signs up, even though it's nearly impossible to measure their impact.

"We've never had a large drug problem to begin with," he said.

But at least by having signs up, Richards said it takes away something that those with drugs or guns had before: an excuse.