BRADENTON -- With the recent rash of school shootings fresh on his mind, Manatee High School Principal Jeff Asher wanted to see how well his staff would respond if there was a weapon on campus.

So he came up with a mock scenario -- aided by about two dozen uniformed officers -- about a student bringing a gun on campus, and decided to find out. But Thursday morning's drill quickly turned real, with police arresting four students for drug and weapons possession.

"I knew right away something was going on," said sophomore Destiny Dawson. Other students said wild rumors -- including that someone had been abducted or killed -- spread throughout the school.

In all, police searched about 200 students and 300 cars in the hourlong drill.

School and police officials would not release the details of the students' arrests, except to say they had marijuana and knives. The students were brought to the juvenile assessment center and will face the appropriate consequences, Asher said. Drug sweeps and security drills have become common on high school campuses. In the wake of the recent school shootings, some other schools in the region offered campus security officers additional training or locked their classrooms.

But the response at Manatee was more extreme.

Shortly after school started in the morning, at least two dozen police cars surrounded the campus. Police randomly evacuated 10 classrooms, and officers escorted students away to search them. Drug-sniffing dogs checked cars and classrooms.

Throughout the drill, teachers and students had no idea what was going on.

"We made it very realistic to see how we might handle a critical situation," Asher said. "This showed us what we do well and what we need to improve."

Asher said all of the students not involved in the drill continued their class work as normal.

But his students tell a different story. As they heard the chaos of the drill outside their classrooms, students grilled their teachers for information and spread wild rumors to their friends in other classes via cell phone text messages.

"One girl told me 'code yellow' meant either someone killed themselves or someone was abducted," said Priscilla Balboa, 15. "At first I thought it was true."

The buzz was even hotter in the portable classrooms away from the main school.

"People were sending texts that there was a toxic spill and we couldn't leave the classroom," said Anthony Bennett, a football player at the school.

Despite the confusion, Asher said the drill was an important indicator of how well his school would respond in an emergency -- even if it was a little extreme.

And while the fake drill did net some very real drugs and weapons, Asher himself played down the severity of the arrests, considering the school has more than 2,200 students.

"Only four had any drugs," he said. "That's a pretty small percentage."
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Staff writer Michael A. Scarcella contributed to this story.

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