Undercover Deputies Make Grade as Students

There is no training manual for rookie cops sent back to high school as undercover narcs. But the really important rules can be learned more quickly than algebra.

* Whenever possible, address authority figures as “dude.”

* Speak frequently about the band Rancid and how incredibly hard they rock.

* If a fellow student rats you off for buying $20 worth of “chronic” in the back of a classroom, don’t bother trying to convince the furious vice principal that you are a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. Run.

“I just said, ‘Later!’ ” recalled Tim, a 29-year-old deputy, and sprinted for the door.

Tim and Araceli, 30, both of whom spoke on the condition that their last names not be used, don’t look like authority figures--a quality that helped them make dozens of drug buys at Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach in the fall, resulting in 17 arrests.

“The sharpest 40-year-old in the world isn’t going to cut it,” said Lt. Rudy Jefferson, who organized the operation.

Both deputies were plucked from the academy in July, saved, at least temporarily, from the less-than-popular jail detail to which all new deputies are assigned. They were chosen for the delicate undercover assignment because they were promising recruits, yes, but also because, more than a decade after they graduated from other Los Angeles-area high schools, both could pass for hormone-addled 16-year-olds.

“It’s still tough to get a drink,” said Tim, a thin blue-eyed blond.

If their looks have changed little, fashions, haircuts and the connotation of the word “chronic”--slang for marijuana--have undergone severe transformations. And before registering for school in September, the two spent the summer studying the habits of the beach city teen in its modern form.

“I’m 30, trying to convince a 16-year-old that I’m 16,” said Araceli, a diminutive, dark-haired woman dressed this recent day in her back-to-school wear: a T-shirt, open flannel shirt, black jeans and giant hoop earrings.

They devoured the most recent issues of Seventeen magazine. They became mall rats, hanging out in food courts, at Levi 501s displays, at The Gap. And they watched hour after hour of MTV, working hard to speak more like Beavis and Butt-head and less like cops.

That’s another reason for getting such undercover officers right from the academy: they haven’t soaked up even a couple of years of cop jargon. In the midst of a drug buy, it’s important not to say “10-4.”

The operation was initiated at the behest of Redondo Union School District officials and local police, who suspected the campus had become a center for teen drug sellers. But, like any well-managed narcotics operation, all information was given on a need-to-know basis, and only a handful of school district and police personnel knew there would be deputies on campus. None of them knew the names or faces.

Names didn’t matter anyway. Tim and Araceli had both acquired new ones, as well as new personal histories, identification cards, “home” phone numbers and parents. On registration day, their “dads,” two sheriff’s detectives, took them to school and signed them up for class.

They were going back to high school. And in many ways, the second time was not only easier, but more fun.

Tim, dressed for school on a recent day in a Quicksilver T-shirt and Vans sneakers, rediscovered his love of spit wads and airplanes. Araceli had no qualms about skipping her first-period physical science class day after day, as that was a prime time to buy dope in the parking lot.

Although dating--he’s married and has a baby, she’s engaged--and after-school activities were out, there were the always popular pep rallies.

“It was pretty awkward to stand up and say ‘Class of ‘97!” Araceli recalled.

There was still the homework, book reports and in-class presentations. But grades, this time, were not so important.

“I can assume that I got two Fs and three Bs,” Araceli said with a grin.

“I think I got an A in . . . badminton,” Tim added with some pride.

Much of the real work came in the back rows of classes such as Adult Living, Introduction to Algebra and U.S. History. Because, the two said, more often than not, that is where the drug dealers operated--under the noses of teachers without the time or training to act as police.

There was the student who worked like a traveling salesman, opening up an eyeglass case to display a variety of illicit wares. There was the tried-and-true backpack method: you leave the twenty bucks in mine, I leave the pot in yours.

You had to be careful, though. Said Tim: “I had a kid tell me, ‘You’d better watch out for narcs.’ ”

The back of the classroom was also as good a place as the parking lot or bathroom for ingesting the goods.

“I watched a girl snort a line,” Tim said. “I saw kids take a shot of vodka. It’s all more open now.”

It was an in-class deal that nearly sank the operation in its first weeks.

Tim had made a marijuana buy that was witnessed by another student, who went to the vice principal and “ratted me off,” Tim said, slipping back into undercover-speak. And when the vice principal pulled him from class, he knew what it was for.

*

The administrator had no idea who Tim was. And Tim, now with a pocket full of evidence, had no authority to divulge his true identity, though he doubts the vice principal would have believed such a story. And regardless, if he talked, the operation was over.

So, on his way to the office, he bolted.

The livid vice principal called his “home,” and an equally disgusted “father” indicated Tim would be back in the office in the morning to receive his comeuppance--minus, of course, any evidence.

Arms folded the next day in the practiced gesture of an unrepentant ne’er-do-well, he “got a lecture on why it’s bad to disobey authority,” Tim said with a chuckle, and a three-day suspension. An expulsion would also have ended the investigation.

After a long day playing 16-year-old dope-smokers, the two struggled to shed their new identities for a few hours each night. Tim would listen to Glenn Miller tapes on the drive home. Araceli would change into clothes slightly less teen.

She didn’t change soon enough one evening, and stopped to visit her soon to be mother-in-law--who, like most friends and relatives, knew nothing of her assignment--in a skirt cut a bit too high and a blouse cut a little too low.

“She had reservations about me marrying her son,” Araceli said.

As the semester wore on, rumors began to circulate among drug users, who the two deputies said were remarkably savvy when it came to the ways of undercover cops. Araceli and Tim were buying LSD and methamphetamine but no one saw them use the drugs. They never made friends and never went to parties. And some suspicious students believed Araceli was too old to be in high school.

“After I started buying, people started calling me ‘narc,’ ” Araceli said. “I’d be walking down the hall, and they’d say, ‘Hey, narc.’ ”

One dealer asked her if she was a cop. She denied it, but he refused to sell to her anyway.

Then, two days before the operation was to end, Tim learned of a student spreading word that he was an undercover officer. The next day, he was pelted with apples and M & Ms during lunch, and began to receive threats.

*

The next day, the two didn’t show up for school. The operation was scheduled to shut down anyway around that time, they said. And a few days after that, on Dec. 7, 17 students were quietly called out of class, led to the principal’s office and arrested. Two of them were found to have drugs on them, police said. All are awaiting trial and expulsion hearings.

After the round-up, students gathered in circles outside the school to speculate on who the undercover deputies might have been. The guesses varied, but Tim, chuckling proudly, figured one youngster had him made when the boy guessed it was “that short little creepy guy. Man,” the student had said, “everybody thought he was a coke-head.”

Despite the number of arrests, Araceli and Tim--as well as Redondo Beach police officials--called the drug traffic at the school relatively light. And while their efforts, they conceded, were not going to halt drug sales and use on the campus altogether, they hoped students who were there to learn and teachers who were there to teach would now have fewer distractions.

The only thing left for them, the two said, is to relearn what they were taught in the academy and unlearn what they learned in school.

Turning to Lt. Jefferson, Tim said: “I hope I never called you ‘dude,’ sir.”