Harbor City : Students Face Drug Charges

Twenty-five Narbonne High School students face expulsion from the Los Angeles Unified School District after being arrested for allegedly selling narcotics to an undercover agent posing as a student on campus.

Officials said the operation also netted five adults and five other youths, identified as former Narbonne students or students at the Patton Continuation High School, which adjoins the Narbonne campus.

Three major drug rings, dealing mostly in rock cocaine and marijuana from homes in the area, were broken up as a result of the arrests last month, officials said.

Principal Janet Bouska said the male agent was assigned to the 2,300-student Narbonne campus as part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s program of checking each high school in the district about every three years.

She said the number of campus arrests was considerably higher than in past operations, but attributed the increase to the effectiveness of the undercover agent, who attended classes for six weeks, rather than to an overall rise in drug activity at the school.

“Almost all of the parents of the students expressed support for the enforcement program,” Bouska said. “They were glad that their kids were caught before they got into even more serious trouble.”

About half of the arrested students were sophomores, she said, and some were major dealers, while others peddled drugs occasionally. If convicted, the students face no only expulsion but sentences ranging from probation to terms in county juvenile facilities, depending on their past records and extent of involvement in drug sales, Bouska said.

She said dealing in drugs on a school campus is “always grounds for expulsion.”