18 Arrested in La Jolla High Raid

Police arrested 18 La Jolla High School students on drug charges Thursday in the second raid at a local high school this week.

Police Lt. Skip DiCerchio said 17 students were arrested on suspicion of selling illegal narcotics, a felony, after a five-month undercover investigation. He said the other student was cited on a misdemeanor count for allegedly furnishing narcotics.

Fourteen students were released to their parents, and two others were taken to County Jail downtown because they were over 18 and considered adults, DiCerchio said, adding that the other two students were taken to Juvenile Hall at the request of their probation officer.

DiCerchio said the arrests were based on undercover work by a female officer who enrolled in the school in September. He said she saw drug transactions taking place at the school and at nearby hangouts.

Small amounts of methamphetamines, marijuana, cocaine and LSD were confiscated in the one-hour operation that began about 8 a.m.

As in the Kearny High School raid earlier this week, students were arrested after a counselor got them out of class and took them to the auditorium.

La Jolla High Principal J.M. Tarvin, who said he wasn’t notified by police until the day before the arrests about the undercover officer’s activities, announced the raid to the student body after police left the school.

DiCerchio said the undercover officer, who withdrew from the school last week, had done a good job of blending in at the relatively close-knit school that does not see a lot of new students.

“That’s a tough school to work, but she did good,” DiCerchio said.

On Tuesday, narcotics detectives arrested 24 people, most of them students from Kearny High, in a similar operation. Two people, including one adult, were arrested at their homes for investigation of possession of drugs for sale in that operation.

Thursday’s was the 11th such operation by the San Diego Narcotics Task Force in three years.