Agoura Hills Wants to Put Drug Agents in School

Worried that Agoura Hills is “sitting on a time bomb” of teen-age drug abuse, city officials are trying to get undercover police into the local high school this fall to sniff out drug dealers.

City Council members said they will ask nearby communities to help persuade the Las Virgenes Unified School District to authorize classroom surveillance by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“It’s worked other places,” Mayor Vicky Leary said. “Somebody needs to do something, to take a stand.”

The city’s unusual decision to become involved in school affairs was prompted by a gloomy report on teen-age drug use this week from Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Squiers.

Report Says Teen-Age Drug Use Rising

Squiers told council members that the overall Agoura Hills crime rate is down, but that drug use by teen-agers is up.

He said sheriff’s deputies in Agoura Hills have encountered drug abusers as young as 12 and noticed a disturbing upswing in the use of LSD by older youngsters.

Questioned Tuesday night by council members, Squiers said his department has been unable to win permission to conduct undercover surveillance on Las Virgenes school campuses.

“The school superintendent has to ask for it,” Squiers said. “The issue has been raised numerous times. The invitation has not been forthcoming.”

Community Is ‘Sitting on a Time Bomb’

Councilman Ernest Dynda suggested that the council ask school officials to reconsider. The community is “sitting on a time bomb,” he said.

Leary said Wednesday that use of undercover operatives will be urged at a meeting of mayors, school officials and leaders of the unincorporated Agoura and Calabasas areas, the territory covered by the school district. The meeting will be set up by Agoura Hills before the start of the fall semester next month, she said.

Leary said the undercover project could resemble one conducted twice-yearly at 10 high schools at a time by the Los Angeles Police Department.

The LAPD undercover drug-purchase program has led to the arrest of about 500 drug dealers a year for 13 years, Cmdr. William Booth said. All of the city’s 49 high schools have been visited at one time or another by youthful-looking undercover officers, he said.

A Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman said that, in recent years, deputies have conducted only one high school undercover operation.

Schools Will Discuss Undercover Proposal

Las Virgenes school officials, who have been reluctant to allow undercover officers on their campuses, said they are willing to discuss the proposal.

“But it’s the kind of thing that, if it’s going to be done, it has to be done very quietly,” Supt. Albert D. Marley said. “There has to be a very minimum number of individuals who know. Like one or two.”

Although former school Supt. Ken Osborn opposed use of undercover officers, Marley, who has been on the job two years, said he is not against them.

“From a timeliness viewpoint, a lot of people, including those in roles like mine, are saying ‘enough already’ to drugs,” Marley said.

Marley said no statistics were available on drug use by teen-agers in the 80-square-mile Las Virgenes district. Agoura High Principal Michael Botsford said about 20 of his school’s 1,750 students were caught with drugs on campus last year.

School Principal Has ‘Reservations’

Botsford said he has “reservations” about the need for undercover officers in his classrooms.

“We don’t seem to have the epidemic some schools have,” Botsford said. “But, if that’s what it takes to remove drugs from campus, so be it.”

Students also had mixed feelings this week about having undercover police officers in their midst.

“It would be pretty unfair, totally sneaky,” said Alex Rice, 15, a 10th-grader at Agoura High. “I’d be really mad if someone I thought was my friend turned out to be a cop.”

“It might bother me, but I’d know it was for a good cause,” said Pepper Sax, 14, a ninth-grader.