6 High School Students Held on Drug Charges : 7th Being Sought After 3-Month Investigation by Undercover Agents at 2 Fullerton Campuses

Six juveniles from two Fullerton high schools were arrested and a seventh was being sought Wednesday on charges of selling cocaine and marijuana to undercover agents during a three-month investigation, police said.

Three male juveniles and one female were arrested on warrants at Fullerton High School, said Gary Miller of the Fullerton Police Department. Narcotics officers learned that two other males they sought were already in the custody of the Orange County Probation Department on unrelated charges and that another juvenile male was being sought, Miller said.

The seven, who are 16 or 17 years old, attend Fullerton and Sunny Hills high schools, Miller said. Those taken into custody were booked at Fullerton City Jail and then placed in the county’s Juvenile Hall, he said.

The undercover investigation involved young-looking adults employed by the Police Department but who were not police officers, Miller said. He declined to identify them further. The agents purchased small amounts of cocaine and marijuana from the students on both campuses during school hours, he said. Most of the purchases were made at Fullerton High School, he said.

Miller did not know the volume of drugs the students allegedly had been selling on campus.

The investigation had “the cooperation and the support of the schools,” said Sgt. Roger White, supervisor of the Police Department’s narcotics bureau. “They don’t want their campuses to become sanctuaries for drug use or dealing.”

A Fullerton man, Todd Allan Schachter, 21, was arrested on a charge of selling marijuana last month in connection with the investigation, Miller said. Schachter, who has been released on bail, allegedly sold the drug to high school students on Pomona Avenue, near the Fullerton High School campus.

Miller said that this is not the first time the Police Department has placed undercover agents on the campuses. He said the three-month investigation was part of a “periodic program” aimed at ferreting out drug sales at the schools.