Local News in Brief : Officers Posing as Students Arrest 206
Youthful-looking police officers posing as students at 10 Los Angeles high schools made more than 300 drug buys that resulted in the arrest of 206 dealers during the fall semester, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said Thursday.
Marijuana was the drug most commonly purchased by the 10 officers in the School Buy Program, Gates said, but he noted that investigators also found cocaine for sale at all the schools, along with PCP, methamphetamine, mescaline and substances purported to be LSD.
Police officers went undercover at Hollywood, Jordan, Sylmar, Fairfax, Taft, Los Angeles, Verdugo Hills, San Pedro, Monroe and Banning high schools for about two months starting in the middle of September.
What the investigators found was a “very, very serious problem” with drugs, Gates said. “It’s a war.”
Thirty-seven of those arrested were admitted gang members, Gates said. The investigation also resulted in the arrest of Roy Blake, 26, and the seizure of 34 plastic packets of cocaine and marijuana sold from a house within 1,000 feet of Martin Luther King Elementary School, a violation of federal law calling for stiff penalties.
The program to buy drugs on school campuses was begun 14 years ago.
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