Contact: Mikayla Hellwich
240-461-3066
ENTRAPPED AUTISTIC TEEN’S LAWSUIT
AGAINST SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS DISMISSED
Temecula, CA – On October 21st, the lawsuit filed by the
family of Jesse Snodgrass against Temecula Valley Unified School District administrators
for the teen’s manipulation and entrapment in a 2012 undercover drug sting was dismissed. The Snodgrass
family previously filed a lawsuit against 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. The judge dropped the case on the grounds that the
defendants could not be proven as knowing participants in targeting and
entrapping Jesse Snodgrass, but the primary issue of entrapping those with special
needs at school remains a significant point of concern.
“Since the time of
Jesse's arrest and subsequent
publicity surrounding the lawsuit, school drug stings in Riverside
and San Bernardino Counties have stopped and not one child has been perp-walked
in handcuffs out of their classroom,” said LADP Deputy Chief Stephen
Downing (Ret.), a board
member for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP),
a criminal justice group working to end the War on Drugs. “But there's nothing
to stand in the way of drug warriors and their school board abettors
victimizing more unsuspecting kids in the future. As a society, we have to
decide that the law needs to protect children from being manipulated and lied
to by authorities. It further deepens the mistrust between citizens and law
enforcement and endangers and harms children and their families. ”
Jesse, who has autism, and has difficulty making friends and
interpreting everyday social cues, was falsely befriended by an undercover
police officer who repeatedly insisted that Jesse find marijuana for him. After
being harassed for nearly three weeks via 60 text messages, Jesse was able to
buy half a joint from a homeless man to give to the officer. Jesse bought
marijuana for his “friend” once more before refusing to do it again, at which
point the officer ceased all communication with Jesse. Shortly thereafter,
Jesse was arrested in front of his classmates along with 21 additional
students, many of whom have special needs.
School drug stings, particularly those in which children with special
needs are targeted, are yet another egregious manifestation of the drug war’s
“tough on crime” mentality. This has long pervaded law enforcement operations and
has resulted in numerous examples of dehumanizing otherwise law-abiding
students. One example of this problematic attitude is found in a 1988 Drug Free
School Zone implementation manual created by the
Chiefs of Police National Drug Task Force in which the Chiefs refer to the
process of arresting students as “taking out the garbage.”
The
LAPD ceased undercover sting operations in schools in 2005, after school
district officials noticed that many of the students caught in these stings had
special needs and disabilities, that mostly small amounts of marijuana were
involved , and that the operations were unsuccessful at reducing drug
availability. The Justice Department would later confirm the findings of the
report.
The
Snodgrass family intends to appeal their case.
LEAP
is dedicated to ending decades of failed policy that have wreaked havoc on
public safety, diverted valuable resources away from fighting violent crimes,
and have ultimately ignored the public health crisis of addiction.
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