FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 30, 2013
October 30, 2013
Contact: Darby Beck: 415.823.5496
Tony Newman: 646.335.5384
Catherine and Doug Snodgrass: 951.643.4212
PARENTS
OF AUTISTIC TEEN ENTRAPPED BY COPS SUE SCHOOL DISTRICT
Lawsuit
Highlights Cruel Practices and Ineffectiveness of Undercover Narcotics Operations
in Schools
TEMECULA, CA – The parents of a 17-year-old special
needs student arrested in an undercover police operation announced today they
are suing the school district that authorized the operation. The student, who
suffers from a range of disabilities, was falsely befriended by a police
officer who repeatedly asked the boy to provide him drugs. After more than
three weeks, 60 text messages and repeated hounding by the officer, the student
was able to buy half a joint from a homeless man he then gave to his new – and
only – “friend,” who had given him twenty dollars weeks before. He did it once
again before refusing to accommodate the officer, at which point the officer
broke off all ties with the child. Shortly thereafter, the student was arrested
in school in front of his classmates as part of a sting that nabbed 22 students
in all, many of them children with special needs.
"Our son is permanently scarred from the abuse
he suffered. Right now, our focus is on him, and our entire family,"
commented Catherine and Doug Snodgrass, the boy’s parents, who are suing the
Temecula Valley Unified School District, Director of Child Welfare and
Attendance Michael Hubbard and Director of Special Education Kimberly Velez for
negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and other charges.
They hope that this suit will send a message to schools around the country that
these raids will not be tolerated.
“What we have
witnessed here is the polar opposite of good policing and an example of how the
drug war skews the priorities of law enforcement officers. There was no crime
here until the police coerced a special needs student into committing one. They
didn't lessen the amount of drugs available and they didn't provide help to any
students who may have had a legitimate problem. Instead, they diminished the
life prospects of everyone they came into contact with. As a parent, as a
retired police officer, as a human being, this outrages me,” remarked LAPD
Deputy Chief Stephen Downing (Ret.), who now speaks on behalf of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials opposed
to the drug war.
The LAPD stopped using undercover stings in schools
in 2005 after a review suggested police were targeting special needs children
and that operations were ineffective at reducing the availability of drugs in
schools. A Department of Justice study would later confirm the finding that
such operations do little to affect the supply of drugs.
“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school
students is sick,” said Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug
Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them
or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small
amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that
we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples
show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing way
more harm than good.”
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