STUDENT DRUG ARRESTS JOLT ALAMANCE

School Sweep Hints At Easy Availability

BURLINGTON -- Gwen Manning knew something was wrong when she got home from
work Wednesday and her son handed her a note from school. It was five pages
long and began, "Undercover Drug Investigation Nets 49 Alamance-Burlington
Students." Her son, Bradley, wasn't among them. But he had friends who were
arrested and taken downtown to the sheriff's office in the systemwide
sweep. The arrests resulted in dozens of felony charges against students in
six of the county's seven high schools.

The busts, aimed at dealers and distributors, were on the evening news,
with shots of parents as they posted bail and retrieved their children.

On Thursday, when residents stopped at the bank or at a diner, they
automatically asked one another whether they had heard anything new about
the charges. Much of their curiosity was about the arrest of [NAME
DELETED], an Eastern High School basketball player.

[NAME DELETED], the state's all-time leading scorer, has an offer to attend
the University of North Carolina in the fall on a full athletic
scholarship. His toppling of the 44-year-old scoring record, accomplished
with a baseline jump shot during a game in December, was so highly
anticipated that play was stopped so officials could present him with a
pair of plaques.

Efforts to reach [NAME DELETED] failed Thursday.

[NAME DELETED] achievement has been a source of pride in the community,
otherwise known for discount shopping outlets and its history as a cradle
of the North Carolina textile industry. But some parents and educators said
there was too much emphasis on [NAME DELETED] arrest and not enough on what
it means that the school superintendent had to call in three police
departments to root out drugs.

"I was shocked," said Manning, president of the academic boosters club at
Cummings High School, her son's school. "I was shocked that there was that
much in the school, and by the number of kids that were involved. It blows
my mind."

Nineteen Cummings students were charged in the raids, which took place
simultaneously at all six campuses Wednesday morning.

At the appointed time, the schools went under general lockdown, with no
class changes and no one allowed in the halls. Officials called students
named in warrants to a central location, where officers picked them up.
School staff began calling parents and directing them to the sheriff's
office to collect their children.

There, officers had reserved space for parents to meet with bondsmen, if
necessary, and with school officials, who could discuss possible suspensions.

They even provided refreshments.

"We tried to make it as easy as possible," said Randy Jones, spokesman for
the Alamance County Sheriff's Office. "We know this is tough on them. It's
tough on us, too."

Jones and others were quick to say that the arrests did not indicate that
Burlington and Alamance County have a greater drug problem than other areas
of the state, although Interstate 85-40 might make it easier for drugs to
be imported.

"Frankly," he said, "this could be done statewide, and it ought to be done
more often."

The investigation began five months ago, at the request of superintendent
James Merrill. Officers had no information about specific students or
particular drugs, just reports by school principals, staff and students'
parents that drugs were being bought and used on their campuses.

Police said an investigation at Western High School failed, possibly
because the undercover agent there was discovered.

Undercover officers in the six other schools bought mostly marijuana, but
they also found cocaine, ecstasy, OxyContin, Dilaudid, Percocet, Valium,
morphine, methadone and heroin. Some of the charges, Jones said, involved
people who were students when the investigation began but had left school
by the time they were arrested.

Sharon Wheeler, an elementary guidance counselor for the city-county
schools and mother of two daughters who graduated from Williams High
School, was disheartened. Six students were arrested at Williams.

"It's very sad," she said again and again, and she was grieving not just
for [NAME DELETED], who, if convicted, could lose a future as a college
basketball star -- but for all of the students who face possible felony
records.

Wheeler said she had watched as some parents faced the television cameras
and complained that their children were the victims of police entrapment.

"Their first response should not have been to blame anyone else but to show
concern for their children," she said.

"If you really want to do something about drugs," she said, "Get out there
and develop a relationship with a kid."