45 Area Youths Charged With Dealing Drugs

Police have arrested 147 high school students--45 of them at Palisades and Westchester high schools on the Westside--on charges of selling drugs, and have seized nearly $20,000 worth of rock cocaine and marijuana in a program that targets teen-age dealers and their adult suppliers.

They also said they have arrested several major operators in the surrounding communities who supplied drugs to dealers, including a 23-year-old Palisades marijuana dealer, two so-called beeper dealers in Westchester and several rock cocaine dealers in Hawthorne.

In a weeklong sweep of seven Los Angeles high schools late last month, narcotics officers rounded up suspected teen-age dealers listed on warrants as J.D. (for juvenile delinquent) Longhair, J.D. Earring or J.D. Blackshirt, handcuffed them in full view of their classmates and took them to the Wilshire Division, where their parents were summoned.

Undercover officers posed as new students and made numerous drug purchases over a three-month period at Sylmar, Fremont, Verdugo Hills, Banning, Reseda, Westchester and Palisades high schools. The number of arrests shows the widespread nature of drug dealing among Los Angeles teen-agers, police said.

Some parents complained of heavy-handed tactics by police and school officials. They charged that officials tried to coerce their children into admitting drug activity and that the children were threatened with expulsion before being charged.

One Palisades couple said Phil Somers, principal at Temescal Canyon Continuation School, suspended their 15-year-old son and threatened to expel him “from this school district for life,” unless he signed a statement admitting his guilt.

“The kid is guilty, and I will not allow drug dealers to be at my school,” they said Somers told them.

The youth refused to sign the statement and was transferred to another alternative school last week to give him a fresh start and to send a message to classmates that drug dealing is not permitted, district officials said.

Somers could not be reached for comment.

Los Angeles Police Detective Everett Berry, who has headed the school program for more than a decade, said mistaken arrests are rare because undercover officers spend 12 weeks in school with the students and are on hand to identify them when plainclothes detectives take them into custody. Officers are trained to be careful not to induce anyone to sell them drugs, but to wait until the subject comes up and an offer is made, he said. “We don’t want to create a drug dealer.”

Police said many of the alleged drug transactions began with conversations at school and were completed after school hours off campus, often at local restaurants. School jurisdiction extends to activities conducted en route to or from school and extracurricular activities, district officials said.

But the school district’s so-called expulsion czar, Hector Madrigal, said no principal has the authority to do more than recommend that a student be expelled if he believes a student “unlawfully possessed, used, sold, furnished or was under the influence of any controlled substance.” Instead, a panel of three certified district staff members question the student--and also, in cases in which the student denies the allegations, the Los Angeles police officer who witnessed the transaction.

Madrigal said he presents the panel’s findings and recommendations to the school board. “There is due process,” he said.

The program, which has generated a great deal of controversy since it began in 1974, places undercover officers at only a handful of Los Angeles’ 43 high schools at any given time. The program is effective, police said, because students are never sure whether their school is under observation.

The number of drug transactions and arrests has declined over the years, Berry and Madrigal said, although the reasons for the reduction are unclear.

“We have dropped from an average of 30 arrests per school to 20,” Berry said, “probably because of better education about drug abuse. Fewer are using. Others, knowing about the program, are reluctant to bring drugs on campus. And in some cases, kids may have merely become savvier--they know our methods.” Berry said police are considering a streamlined plan under which they would bypass the court system and send young drug sellers directly into rehabilitation programs.

However, some fear that without the leverage of the courts, teen-agers and their parents may not take the offenses seriously and complete drug programs. Berry predicted that 98% of the teen-agers arrested last month will be charged with felony sale of narcotics and that 98% of those will be convicted. Most will be given probation and ordered to complete a drug rehabilitation program unless they want to go to juvenile hall, he said.

“We want a drug-free learning environment,” Berry said, adding that the intent of the program is not to imprison youngsters but to stem the sale of drugs on school campuses and redirect young teen-agers who are dabbling in drugs, before they are caught up in the adult drug world.

“They don’t realize they can be murdered in dope deals if they don’t stop what they are doing,” Berry said.