OFFICER FINDS READY SELLERS

The scales from chemistry class at James Madison High were disappearing.

Stolen by students who were selling them to drug dealers or using them
themselves to measure drugs, the scales were not the only clue Madison
administrators had in 1995 that the drug problem was worsening. Concerned
students and teachers were coming forward privately, and a videotape was
confiscated that showed students in a pot-smoking contest off school grounds.

The school was also tipped to a drug party in a Fairfax City motel, where
school security and local police on surveillance saw so many Madison
students coming and going that they had a yearbook brought to them to help
identify faces.

Principal Robert Clark sensed "passive tolerance" or outright denial among
adults in the community and decided to bring in an undercover officer. "I
really care about these kids," Clark said. "I wanted to send a strong
message."

Capt. Gary Ball, supervisor of the narcotics unit when Clark called, knew
the difficulties in trying to blend into a high school; no Fairfax officer
had tried to pass as a student since the 1970s. But like the principal,
Ball thought that even without arrests, the effort might have a deterrent
effect once the officer's presence was exposed.

So in July 1995, Ball went looking for a cop who looked young and found
Nick Boffi, 24. That fall, Madison High students were joined by
"Christopher Moore," an 18-year-old transfer student from Omaha.

He wore baggy jeans, trendy tennis shoes and a silver marijuana leaf on a
leather cord around his neck. He took U.S.Va. Government, English 12 and
GourmetInternational Foods. After school, he headed for his job at a pet
shop. Then he went home and did his homework.

To conceal from school personnel why he was there, his transfer records
explained why a student who ostensibly lived in Centreville was in a Vienna
school: "social and emotional adjustment as outlined in an attached letter
from psychologist."

Soon Boffi began making friends. He couldn't invite them home, so he used
the pet shop as a meeting place. He couldn't party with them, so he spent
hours on the phone with classmates. Taped to the second home phone,
installed by the police department, was a daily reminder: "You are Chris."

To become a more convincing peer, he blew off some schoolwork. He started
cutting classes and landed in Saturday detention. On his next English test,
he made an F.

Whether his badboy attitude helped his cause, Boffi can't be sure. But
soon after he started sliding, a classmate in casual conversation told him
where he could buy some dope. If "you meet with this kid, he can hook you
up with another kid," Boffi recalled the teenager saying.

Boffi arranged to meet the 16yearold middleman at a McDonald's in Vienna.
As Boffi stood in line, the middleman approached and said his friend was
waiting in the bathroom, where Boffi handed over $40 and got a
quarterounce of marijuana. "It was a real quick transaction," Boffi said.

About a week later, another 16yearold student in his Sports Entertainment
Marketing class said he could "hook me up," Boffi said. He wanted the $40
up front, so Boffi paid him before class started. The other students didn't
seem to notice.

The next day in class, the student gave him half the promised marijuana and
the other half the next day when Boffi agreed to pick it — and the student
— up on the way to school.

Trouble arise when Boffi's new friends weren't convinced by his explanation
that he never smoked the dope because he was on probation and had to test
drugfree.

"Chris" abruptly stopped attending class, and the principal later announced
that he had been there undercover.

For all his effort — weeks of training and three months of Macbeth,
McDonald's and Beavis and Butthead — Boffi had little to show. The case
against the teenager who sold him pot in the bathroom was dismissed because
Boffi could not identify him in a photograph. Two of the other teenagers
pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. They were placed on probation.

Boffi did net one felony conviction, for the teenager who sold him
marijuana in class. The punishment: one year of probation and 90 days' loss
of his driver's license.

"They basically got slaps on the wrist," Boffi said.