Should schools use undercover cops?

YES
Joseph Griffin
Safe, secure schools are the issue

I made a decision last April to insert a young police officer into a Massachusetts public high school in an undercover capacity. Although this decision was reached in cooperation with both the school principal and the district superintendent, it was primarily my decision as police chief and one that I did not make lightly. The schools and police share a common goal in working jointly to provide a safe and secure environment that allows children to learn. Attempting to preserve such a school climate was paramount in my decision to use a young officer to fill the role of a graduate student assistant in the school’s physical education department.

We—police and educators—happen to be in a business where rumors can be devastating. The rumor mill at this particular school, Dover-Sherborn Regional High School, had been particularly active during the past school year, with tales of widespread drug use escalating throughout the fall and winter. Although my opinion (which the principal shared) was that the reports of drug involvement were highly exaggerated, I did not believe opinion was enough to rely on. I needed objective and factual information as to the extent, if any, of drug use in our school.

The undercover officer’s assignment was to make observations, establish relationships and gather information to confirm or dispel the rumors of substance abuse by students at this school. The information helps me, a police official, preserve a delicate balance— ensuring that the exercise of one’s individual liberties, such as freedom from unreasonable search, do not conflict with the civil rights of others—in this case, the right to a public education in a safe and orderly environment.

In some communities, undercover officers posing as students, teachers or staff are used routinely. Other districts may assign a full-time uniformed school resource officer, while still others might perform regular sweeps with specially trained dogs or use a combination of these or other methods to combat drug use in schools. The insertion of the officer into the Dover-Sherborn school was more than warranted by the ever-increasing reports of drug activity, some of which ultimately turned out to be more than just baseless rumor. When evaluating various methods, it’s essential to keep in mind what is driving the decision to use them: Our children have a right to learn in a safe and substance-free environment, and my decision to use the undercover officer was made to ensure that this right was preserved.

Joseph Griffin is a 34-year police officer, serving for the past 10 years as chief of the Dover, Mass., Police Department. Griffin is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and an adjunct faculty member at Western New England College.

NO
Jason Higgins
It's an Orwellian non-solution

Anything going on in a public high school should be educational. If there is a sports program, it should be teaching sportsmanship and team play, not grooming potential million-dollar athletes. Likewise, if there is a drug program in place, it should be educational and not an arm of the Thought Police.

The question is, of course, not whether drugs should be tolerated in schools but what price we are willing to pay for what level of eradication. One can’t easily argue against the use of certain drug-removal programs on the basis of efficiency anymore than one could use that basis to argue against Stalin’s tactics. Unfortunately, one of the main problems with high schools today is that rather than moving toward interactive community environments, they are moving toward police states. Twice in the past two years my school has been under lockdown, a period during which armed officers with German shepherds march through the hallways pulling kids from classrooms. Orwellian enough for you?

It seems to me that any reasonable person would want to move away from this, and many claim they do. Unfortunately, other policies often are no better. For example, young-looking police cadets posing as students (you may remember them as “narcs”) regularly are used in high schools today, participating in what might otherwise be considered “entrapment” or “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” The existence of these officers in a school environment helps breed a subtle but destructive fundamental sense of distrust, one that is ingrained in students and carried with them when they leave high school. A person betrayed by another posing as a “friend” has an incredibly difficult time ever again believing in community.

Perhaps if the policies already in place at our schools were taken a bit more seriously, we wouldn’t have to resort to these Big Brother tactics. Several infractions of my school’s so-called zero tolerance policies have resulted in not much more than a slap on the wrist for the students involved; barring a student from prom is hardly taking the bull by the horns. Try expelling a few students for breaking these rules and see how often it happens. Is the problem serious or isn’t it? Are there incentives for students to follow the rules of a school? If not, no manner of hard-core tattletale tactics is going to solve the problem.