Intellihub – by JG Vibes CALIFORNIA (INTELLIHUB) — Police in Riverside County, have been running an undercover sting investigation in a local school to hunt down small time teenage drug vendors and users. The semester long operation resulted in the arrest of 25 different teenagers, all of whom believed that undercover officers were close friends.
The underage students were taken to a juvenile prison, and the adult students, 18-year-old Serina Ramirez and 19-year-old Erick De La Cruz of Perris High School, were taken to a detention center.
Anthony Rodriguez, 16, said the officers weren’t on campus for long.
“They knew who they were looking for and exactly how to get there,” he said.
Trevor Steinrichter, 16, said police showed up in his history class.
“Scary. I saw my friend get arrested,” he said.
Bruce Hollen, 16, said it was disturbing to think a deputy was posing as a student.
“You think you can trust people – you just never know,” he said.
This large drug bust occurred in the same school district where 22 students were arrested last year in a similar raid. One of those students had autism and was actually lured into buying cannabis by an undercover officer. The parents of this student are currently taking legal action about police.
Critics of undercover drug stings argue it’s unfair to target teenagers. “Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance said Friday.“More often than not the drug war is ruining young people’s lives and doing much more harm than good.”
Sources:
[1] Cops Pretend To Be 11th Graders, Then Arrest 25 Students – Huffington Post
[2] Perris and Menifee students snared by undercover deputies – PE.com
Writer Bio:
JG Vibes is an Intellihub.com investigative journalist, staff writer and editor. He is also the author of “Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance”, an 87 chapter e-book and is an artist with an established record label. Find him on his Facebook.
For media inquires, interviews, questions or suggestions for this author, email: vibes@intellihub.com or telephone: (347) 759-6075.
http://intellihub.com/2013/12/15/police-posing-as-11th-graders-arrest-25-students/
And you can be sure of it that the cops were suplying the drugs these kids were buying and perhaps selling. Cops love snitches to entrap the unsuspecting. Cops and their little snitch/rat buddies will never change.
they always put narcs in the schools even when I was a young… we knew it but they always ended up busting some dumb kid… “dah”