COPS NOT ALONE IN BLAME FOR CHAD'S DEATH

Lloyd Charton is a lawyer. And lawyers make a business out of twisting
words around until they're barely recognizable.

But when he says the Brea cops -- and perhaps ultimately the taxpayers --
are responsible for the death of 17-year-old Chad MacDonald, Lloyd is
laying a whole lot of lawyering on the word "responsibility."

Chad MacDonald was the Yorba Linda teen-ager who was killed earlier this
month in a Norwalk drug house; his girlfriend was raped and shot, but
survived. Thisweek the Register reported that Chad, with his mother's
signed permission, had become a drug informer for the Brea police to avoid
prosecution on methamphetamine possession charges.

Although police say Chad wasn't working for them when he went to the house
in Norwalk, the case has sparked a furious public debate over the wisdom of
using juveniles as drug informers.

Meanwhile, attorney Charton, who represents Chad's mother, Cindy, says the
Brea cops bear heavy responsibility for Chad's death because, he claims,
they pressured Chad to become an informant, a role that Charton says
ultimately led the teen-ager to the Norwalk house.

"The police failed to insist that Chad get help when they knew he had a
drug habit," Charton told me Friday. "They failed in their responsibility
to Chad and to the public."

So far at least, Charton and Chad's mother haven't filed a lawsuit. But
lawsuits follow lawyers as surely as a slime trail follows a garden snail.
I'm betting that eventually a process server with a multimillion-dollar
lawsuit in his hand is going to knock on someone's door.

The problem is that the door probably will belong to the Brea Police
Department -- which means the taxpayers would have to foot the litigation
bill. But not everyone who was wittingly or unwittingly involved in the
chain of circumstances that led up to Chad MacDonald's death was wearing a
badge.

Of course, the teen-ager's killers bear the most direct responsibility. But
Chad bears responsibility for his death, too.

First, he shouldn't have gotten involved with drugs. And after being busted
when he was just three months shy of his 18th birthday, he shouldn't have
tried to wriggle out of his punishment by taking on the devious and often
dangerous job of being a snitch.

And although it's hard to say this about the grief-stricken mother of a
slain son, Cindy MacDonald may be partly responsible as well. Without her
signature on the consent form, Chad couldn't have become an informant.

Attorney Charton insists that his client's main goal is to force the cops
to admit their error and stop using minors as drug informants. That would,
he says, "go a long way toward defusing Cindy's outrage."

But when I asked him if an apology and a promise not to do it again would
stave off a lawsuit, Charton wouldn't answer.

Personally, I think the entire so-called "war" against drug use -- by
adults, at least -- is a waste of time and law-enforcement resources and,
too often, lives. And using minors as drug informers is a pretty bad idea.

But the cops, and the taxpayers, shouldn't have to bear the sole financial
responsibility for Chad MacDonald's death.

Because there were a lot of wrong turns on that tragic road to the house in
Norwalk.

And while young Chad MacDonald didn't deserve what happened to him, he took
the first wrong turn on his own.

Gordon Dillow may be reached at (714) 953-7953.