In Detroit, Metal-Detector Searches Hit Legal Snags

By William Snider

Detroit school officials, entangled in court proceedings over their periodic use of metal detectors to screen students for weapons, have agreed to halt the searches temporarily.

The searches, begun last year on a random and periodic basis, were to have been broadened in 1986 to include daily searches at all high schools. The school board voted in November to approve the new plan and order more metal detectors. (See Education Week, Dec. 11, 1985.)

But in an unexpected twist, the federal district judge presiding in Detroit's long-running school-desegregation lawsuit last month linked that suit with a legal challenge...