Sex, Lies and undercover cops

Here's more on the high school bust in Falmouth. The Boston Globe coverage brings up an important angle on this investigation I hadn't immediately considered. How creepy is it for a 23 year old woman to be tempting 16 year old boys into commiting crimes? If she wasn't a cop it would be considered pedophilia.

"My kid was impressed by this pretty undercover drug officer," said the mother of a 16-year-old Falmouth student arraigned yesterday in juvenile court.

I mean look at these young boys. At that age they're walking sacks of hormones. You remember high school. Assuming she was passed as a senior, how hard is it to imagine a teenage boy willing to do anything to impress an attractive upperclass[wo]men? And she actively pursued these kids.

Several students yesterday described the undercover officer as shy but always looking for a party. "She would tell people that her mother was dead and that her dad was in the Navy and that she needed pot to cope," said Julia Massi, a 17-year-old senior who said she was in English class with the officer. "She made people feel bad for her. She would say 'Hey, if you see a party, give me a shout.' "

What did our kids learn from this investigation? Certainly nothing about honesty and a lot about betrayal of their natural impulse to help their peers.

And what is the school left with? A handful of teenagers with ruined lives and a new atmosphere of distrust. It certainly won't stop the kids from using drugs. It will simply create a job opening for a new dealer to step in. Perhaps it will be someone who wouldn't have started dealing except for the void left by the kids who were busted. Hell of a stupid way to "protect" our kids from drugs if you ask me.

On a side note, this quote says it all about surveys on drug use that rely on self-reported information.

Most students indicated in a school survey they had not used marijuana in the past month, [the superintendent] said. "About 85 percent said they hadn't," he said.

[A student], Massi said she took that survey, but got bored because it was so long, and filled in some responses without reading the questions. "A lot of students didn't want to tell the truth," she said.

It seems unlikely they will be any more inclined to be honest after this investigation.