School Suspends 5 Students Involved in Video Showing Alleged Drug Use in Class

The Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, stunned by the televising of a video showing students apparently smoking marijuana in class, has suspended the two alleged smokers and the three students responsible for the video.

The Friday incident has created a media circus at Norwalk High School and bad publicity for the district, which suspended the students for five days each.

“We did it to show what’s going on in school,” said Edgar Llamas, one of the students who shot the video. “It’s not just ‘go to school, sit down and learn’ anymore.”

The 10-minute video shows two students at Norwalk High School rolling and smoking what appear to be marijuana joints. The teacher can be seen in the front of the room handing out and receiving assignments.

“Do you see what goes on in our school?” student Selvin Engleton asks on the tape.

Schools officials conceded that there is a drug problem on campus, but they insisted that the same could be said of any Southern California high school. They added that the two smokers claim they were only puffing oregano.

Television station KCBS paid $750 to the students who shot the tape Friday. It was broadcast later the same day.

District administrators have clamped a gag order on employees, announced an investigation, downplayed the school’s drug problem and suggested that the tape may have been a publicity stunt.

“We’re right on top of it,” Supt. Robert Aguilar said Wednesday. “The students did indicate it was not marijuana they were smoking.”

His comments failed to halt the media interest, however. Numerous television stations have broadcast the tape, and on Thursday district employees said they were fielding calls from national television shows “20/20” and “Inside Edition.”

The three students who shot the video have held numerous televised news conferences. Several times, camera crews have rolled up unannounced to the campus of 3,100 students, sometimes interviewing students through open windows.

“They’ve totally disrupted the educational process in this school and the district,” said Richard Ruether, head of the district’s teachers union. “Nothing has happened in the schools or the district in the last three days.”

Llamas, Engleton and Henry Bravo, the students responsible for the video, said they were playing around with Bravo’s video camera when Engleton had the idea of videotaping two classmates who they said occasionally smoked marijuana in the back of an art classroom. They said they asked permission from the two students before the tape started rolling.

District officials said they suspended Llamas, Engleton and Bravo for the unauthorized use of an electronic surveillance device at school, which is prohibited by the state Education Code. The other two students were suspended for smoking, which is also against school rules.

Florence Russell, the teacher in the video, is a retiree with more than 30 years’ experience with the district. She had been substituting in the class for about two months.

Russell has been removed from the class at her own request, teachers union officials said. Russell called the tape a hoax. “I’ve never had an experience with drugs in the classroom,” she said. The tape was probably shot over more than one occasion and possibly spliced, she said. The smokers “certainly wouldn’t have done it in the class where the teacher could see it and smell it.”

“I was there. I would have seen it and smelled it,” Russell said. She said she remembers several students trying to block her view. Moments later, she noticed a video camera when she walked to the back of the room to see why several students were gathered. A student tried to conceal the camera and that was the last she noticed of it, she said.

Russell did not challenge the boys because she knew that some students took photography classes, she said. Her only concern was getting the students back to work, she added.

Deputy Supt. Howard Rainey said that smoking in class--if it did happen--is almost unheard of at the school, but that he knows some students are using drugs and drinking alcohol. “Hey, we know we have a drug problem,” he said. “To me, the question is: Are we doing as well as we should? I think we are doing very well. Could we be doing more? Probably.”

As if to underscore the problem, sheriff’s deputies in Norwalk briefly detained about a dozen youths Thursday who were suspected of skipping class and drinking alcohol near the school. The day before the videotaping, school authorities discovered six students smoking marijuana or in possession of drug paraphernalia in a baseball dugout behind the school. Those students were suspended and could face further disciplinary action, school officials said.

The students who shot the video said they will appeal their suspensions to a district review board on Monday. “I had brought the video camera to school before,” Bravo said. “This is the first time they suspended me for having it.”

One school official, who asked not to be named, said the students would probably not have been suspended under the little-known no-video rule if they had not turned over the tape to KCBS.

Engleton found his suspension particularly perplexing because he said he neither owned the camera nor shot the video. “They’re suspending us because they’re mad,” he said of district officials.

Board members were briefed on the incident during a closed session Thursday night. Before the meeting, trustee Mary Lou Gomez said she would consider revoking the suspension of the video operators if their story checked out. She said the board should also use the incident as an opportunity to review whether the district’s security measures and anti-drug programs are working.

Board member Jesse Luera was also conciliatory. “Punishing people because they’ve done something wrong is not always the best answer,” he said. “I have to listen to the kids, and the kids on the camera said there is a problem.”

Times staff writer Tina Griego contributed to this story.