POLICE TACTICS IN DRUG STING NEAR SCHOOL ANNOY JUDGE

Undercover agents drove a suspect in a cocaine deal to an elementary school
parking lot to discuss a transaction so they could then seek a stiffer
sentence against him and his colleagues under a law designed to punish drug
dealing near schools, according to court testimony.

Testimony about the police tactics prompted a General Sessions Court judge
to say he was " very troubled" by what he considered a misuse of
Tennessee's Drug-Free School Zone Act.

"All the problems we are having with our schools, we don't need the Police
Department setting up (drug) buys on school property," Judge John Aaron
Holt said at the end of an April 12 hearing for four men charged with
conspiracy to distribute cocaine. "This is not a good thing to be doing."

Metro Drug Task Force Officer Jose Ramirez testified that securing
"enhanced" sentences was the reason he drove suspect Bandelio Nieto to
Paragon Mills Elementary School to meet another undercover officer. The
second officer was carrying the $13,500 that Ramirez had promised Nieto for
a pound of cocaine.

Nieto and three other men were arrested when, Ramirez said, the cocaine was
delivered in a shopping center parking lot on Nolensville Pike a short time
later, on the night of March 29.

Nieto's lawyer, Mario Ramos, told Holt that police "manipulated" Nieto to
bring him under the Drug-Free School Zone Act by driving him to a school
before the deal went down somewhere else.

"It goes against the entire intent of the statute," Ramos said.

While Holt was critical of the tactics that police used, he sent the
charges against all four defendants to the Davidson County grand jury for
possible indictment.

Tennessee legislators voted in 1995 to raise the penalties for dealing in
drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. Sponsors of the Drug-Free School Zone
Act said they wanted to create "sanctuaries" that would protect children
from drug-related activity.

The Tennessee statute, which can increase a defendant's sentence as much as
fivefold, is similar to federal law and statutes on the books in many other
states. State and federal appeals courts have said that the
"sentence-enhancement" laws are constitutional, even if a defendant simply
passed by a school at some point during a drug transaction.

Davidson County District Attorney General Torry Johnson said Friday that
his office looks at cases involving drug activity near schools case by case
before deciding whether to seek the longer sentences possible under the law.

"We've been wrestling with the equities of it," Johnson said. "I think law
enforcement needs to be careful to not take advantage of the statute and
undercut the very purpose that it is there for."

Assistant District Attorney John Zimmermann, who works with the Davidson
County Drug Task Force, said Friday that undercover officers buy and sell
drugs "in order to catch drug dealers."

But, Zimmermann said, "We have told the police that we don't want drug
deals set up near schools when there is any chance of children or people
associated with the school being present."

Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron noted that Ramirez and Nieto's rendezvous
at Paragon Mills Elementary with another undercover officer occurred around
8 p.m., when the officers "knew that no one would be around."

Nashville lawyer and legal scholar David Raybin said Thursday that the
Tennessee appellate courts have never ruled on a situation like Nieto's, in
which undercover officers took a drug suspect to a school "for the mere
purpose of jacking up the sentence."

He predicted that the courts would take a dim view of using the Drug-Free
School Zone Act in that way.

The law "is not doing what it's intended to do when it's twisted around
like this," Raybin said.

Anyone convicted under the statute is bumped into a higher sentencing range
and has to serve 100% of the minimum sentence in the higher range. For
example, a drug conviction that would ordinarily require someone to serve
30% of an 8-to-12-year sentence before becoming eligible for parole can be
"enhanced" to require that he serve 100% of a 15-year sentence.