OTIS L. SANFORD: COPS POSING AS KIDS JUST DOES NOT SEEM RIGHT

OK, I get it.

This is about creating a safe school environment and protecting
students from the scourge of drug dependency.

It's about zero tolerance, or something close to it, for peddling even
small quantities of drugs on or near a school campus. It's about
keeping kids from making a stupid mistake that they will regret, and
perhaps pay for, the rest of their lives.

And it's about closing a door that could lead to more serious, even
violent criminal activity down the road.

I get all of that, and more.

So why do I feel a slight twinge of uneasiness about what went down
last week at Millington Central High School?

A fresh-faced Millington police officer posed as a high school student
for four months. The "student" attended classes, took exams, did
homework, tolerated cafeteria food -- and allegedly bought drugs from
other students.

The undercover sting ended Tuesday with the arrest of 13 students on
charges of selling marijuana, Ecstasy and prescription drugs. The
charges also included peddling fake drugs as if they were the real
thing.

That's 13 students nabbed after a four-month sting at a school where
1,500 students attend.

Millington Police Chief Rick Jewell, who is leaving office next month,
set up the undercover operation with permission from Shelby County
Schools Supt. Bobby Webb. Millington Central's principal and assistant
principal were the only ones at the school in on the ruse.

It was the second major undercover drug sting at the Millington school
in less than three years. In April 2006, police arrested 26 students
and former students after they sold drugs to undercover officers.
Those cops, however, did not pose as students.

In fact, Jewell said, the latest sting is likely the first time in
Shelby County that a cop has posed as a student to nab suspected high
school drug pushers.

But the tactic has been used effectively around the country for years.
Police in Los Angeles did it for 30 years before disbanding the
program in 2004 amid heavy criticism after an examination showed kids
in special education were being targeted.

In suburban Seattle last year, two undercover detectives, ages 29 and
33, passed themselves off as students and bought a variety of illegal
drugs. The sting resulted in 12 arrests.

A 22-year-old cop fresh out of the police training academy posed as a
skateboarding, baggy jeans-wearing teenager in a Redmond, Wash., high
school in 2003, and arrested five students for selling drugs.

And in suburban Boston, an attractive young officer enrolled in high
school in 2006, and for three months told fellow students she needed
drugs to deal with the pain caused by the death of her mother and an
absentee father. Nine gullible male students, who sold her marijuana
and Ecstasy, were later arrested, according to The Boston Globe.

In each of these undercover operations, police officials said, they
were responding to citizen complaints about rampant drug problems in
the schools.

And court challenges to these type of sting operations are rarely, if
ever, successful.

Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons said Jewell, a former
narcotics officer, notified him beforehand of the Millington school
sting.

"I thought it was appropriate," Gibbons said, noting that schools are
designated as drug-free zones.

But E. Winslow "Buddy" Chapman, executive director of Crimestoppers of
Memphis and Shelby County, was less enthusiastic. While not
criticizing the Millington sting, Chapman believes the practice is not
a long-term answer to fighting criminal behavior at school.

"You can put undercover officers in schools until you're blue in the
face, but only the students really know what's going on."

Better answers, he insists, are found in programs such as Trust Pays,
the Crimestoppers initiative that offers cash rewards to students who
anonymously report criminal activity to school officials.

Still, as long as they are legal and as long as school leaders and
most parents are willing to accept them, these kinds of undercover
stings will likely continue.

I just can't help but believe there must be better ways to fight drug
peddling at schools than to dupe teenagers, some of whom foolishly
commit illegal acts just to fit in and be accepted.

But believe me, I get it. The deterrent effect, the whole bit. I just
don't necessarily like it.