FIRST-GRADER'S 'CANDY' TREATS TURN OUT TO BE CRACK COCAINE

A first-grader brought dozens of little bags of crack cocaine to his
Chicago Heights elementary school Friday and began passing them out to
classmates, calling them "candy," officials said Sunday.

Adults at Lincoln School, which has fewer than 200 students in kindergarten
through eighth grades, learned what was going on through other kids and
alerted police.

"He lives in a household where apparently there's drug dealing, and when he
sees these little bags of rock cocaine around the house, they're telling
him it's candy," Chicago Heights Deputy Police Chief Michael Camilli said.

A member of the household is believed to have stashed "40 bags of rock in
his book bag . . . when he gets to school he finds them in his book bag,
and he knows this is 'candy' because this is what [people in his home] say
it is," Camilli said. "Then he starts handing it out. It's insane."

'All Bases Were Covered'

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was contacted. A
DCFS spokeswoman had no information when contacted Sunday. The boy's
guardians are being sought; arrests are "pending," Camilli said.

Nobody apparently was hurt in the incident. But a person familiar with the
situation was angry with the response by police, saying that "somebody
could have been hurt because they didn't go around and talk to kids about
it" and make sure all drugs were recovered.

However, Chicago Heights District 170 Supt. Dollie Helsel said that "all
bases were covered, truly," and she's confident "anything that was given
out was retrieved."

There was a rumor -- which police couldn't confirm -- the boy had passed
out or shown the drug to other kids at a community center in the south
suburb Thursday.

The neighborhood around the school can be "a tough area," with street drug
dealing sometimes visible from school grounds, school officials said.

While the district takes a tough stance on drugs, the boy, who is 6 or 7,
isn't likely to face discipline because he didn't know what he was doing,
Helsel said.

"He was a darling little child; he had no idea of what he had. The ruckus,
I'm sure, upset him," she said. "It breaks your heart to see that."

Camilli was stunned by the case: "I've been here 29 years; I've never seen
anything like it."