In 2012, it was called Performance Glasshouse, an undercover drug investigation at three Riverside County high schools that resulted in the arrest of 22 students. 2 years afterward, it was known as the high schoolhouse drug sting that caused some California schoolhouse districts to lose their enthusiasm for high schoolhouse drug stings.

Now a Riverside Canton Superior Courtroom approximate has dismissed the lawsuit at the center of the controversy around Operation Glasshouse. The 2022 suit was brought by Jesse Snodgrass, who was a 17-year-former Chaparral Loftier School senior with autism when he was arrested as part of the sting. The suit alleged that the Temecula Valley Unified School District had breached its mandatory duties past assuasive a deputy from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department to manipulate Snodgrass – a friendless student who had bipolar disorder, trouble keeping up with conversations and a history of being bullied – as part of an secret drug sting.

Student in cap and gown

Credit: Snodgrass family

Jesse Snodgrass in his high school cap and gown.

On Monday, Catherine Snodgrass, Jesse's mother, said her son would appeal the ruling. "The judge is giving the administration free rein and that's troubling," she said.

The lawsuit was the offset in California to try to hold a schoolhouse commune responsible for protecting students in special instruction from allegedly existence manipulated in a police drug sting, according to Snodgrass'south lawyer, Wendy Housman.

But in a ruling filed with the courtroom on November. 10, Approximate Raquel A. Marquez establish the district not liable for damages, stating that district officials had non worked with the sheriff's section to deliberately target Snodgrass. In addition, Marquez ruled, district officials had immunity from liability for ii reasons: because they were cooperating with police and considering California Government Code 820.2 protects public employees who are making routine policy decisions.

The dismissal of the case by the judge "validates that the district'southward level of involvement in the hole-and-corner operation was only to cooperate with police force enforcement," the Temecula Valley Unified School District said in a statement.

Undercover high school drug stings accept been happening across the nation since before President Richard Nixon declared "a war on drugs" in 1971, said Stephen Downing, a retired deputy chief with the Los Angeles Police Department who ran the department's narcotics enforcement plan from 1973 to 1977. Downing is now a national board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a criminal justice group that aims to end the war on drugs, and has closely followed the Snodgrass case.

But about students who are arrested practise not file suit battling their abort, Downing said. "People fear standing upwards to a district attorney," he said. The Snodgrass lawsuit provided a rare look at the workings of an hole-and-corner high schoolhouse drug sting and launched a barrage of negative publicity well-nigh Performance Glasshouse, including a 2022 Rolling Stone magazine piece titled "The Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass," and a video by the Vice Media group titled "The State of war on Kids."

In March 2014, the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy grouping, sent a letter to all school districts in Riverside County alerting officials to contempo school drug stings, the alleged targeting of special needs students and a California Department of Education investigation into Temecula Valley Unified School District's process for expelling students in special pedagogy.

The publicity "has resulted in Riverside and San Bernardino not doing the drug stings anymore," Downing said. The Riverside County Sheriff'southward Department confirmed that information technology did not conduct high school drug stings in 2022 and has no plans to do so in 2015, co-ordinate to section spokesman Deputy Armando Muñoz. San Bernardino Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Deputy Olivia Bozek said that there accept been no loftier school drug stings in the county "in the concluding couple of years." (See tabular array below for a list of contempo high school hugger-mugger drug operations.)

Underground drug stings were ended in the Los Angeles Unified Schoolhouse District in 2005, afterwards concerns that the stings did not lead to the arrest of drug dealers, were difficult to prosecute considering of allegations of entrapment and often targeted students who had special needs and emotional issues.

"Instead of the guy slinging dope on campus, y'all wind up with a random drove of whichever kids might be naive, stupid, persuadable or gullible enough to notice a joint for a stranger," said Kevin Reed, LA Unified's legal counsel at the fourth dimension, in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

Police enforcement agencies accept initiated school drug stings because the arrests "added to their statistics," and the agencies could use those statistics when they applied for federal grants, said Downing. A 2022 American Ceremonious Liberties Spousal relationship Study, The State of war on Marijuana in Black and White, noted that the federal Edward Byrne Memorial Land and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Plan disperses about $250 1000000 a yr to jurisdictions across the country for law enforcement activities, which are evaluated in role through the number of people arrested.

Merely the Riverside County Sheriff'southward Section said that the drug stings were not related to a drive to increase the number of arrests. "Department funding is not affected by drug arrest statistics," Muñoz said.

As described in the lawsuit, Snodgrass and other students, including about vi students in special education, were befriended by an undercover deputy sheriff known as "Dan," who allegedly badgered them into buying modest amounts of drugs for him. Co-ordinate to Catherine Snodgrass, Jesse was new to Chaparral High, lacked the ability to pick up on social cues because of his autism and made simply one friend in his first semester – Dan, who introduced himself to Jesse on the first mean solar day of school and talked with him in graphics art class.

In 60 text messages, Dan implored Jesse to observe him marijuana, the conform said, and he gave Jesse a $twenty bill with which to do so. Off-campus in September 2012, almost a month afterward schoolhouse started, Jesse approached a man who appeared to be homeless, paid $20 for a plastic bag containing enough marijuana for half a joint and and then delivered the purse to Dan, the adapt said. Dan gave him another $20 for marijuana a calendar month afterwards and Jesse returned to the homeless man and fabricated some other small purchase.

"When yous have special needs, yous'll practise anything for a friend," Catherine Snodgrass said.

On Dec. 11, 2012, a swarm of officers entered Temecula Valley High, Chaparral High and Rancho Vista High and arrested the students, who were each charged with a felony for possession for sale of a controlled substance. The officers seized marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, heroin, LSD and illegal prescription drugs. The sheriff'southward department declined to disembalm the amounts of drugs seized.

All 22 students were expelled from school. Snodgrass later had his expulsion overturned past an administrative law judge who ruled that the commune had left Snodgrass "to fend for himself, anxious and lone, against an undercover police officer" and that Snodgrass "has overwhelmingly demonstrated that his actions were a manifestation of his disability."

A gauge granted Snodgrass extenuating circumstances for the felony accuse and he was given six months of probation.

Brendan Hamme, a lawyer with the American Ceremonious Liberties Marriage of Southern California who has followed the Snodgrass example, said that the drug stings in Los Angeles Unified and Temecula Valley Unified "are generally representative" of typical loftier school drug stings. The stings involve pocket-sized quantities of drugs and "students with disabilities, loners who take difficulty making friends, or students who use marijuana themselves but aren't dealers by whatsoever stretch," he said.

Despite the dismissal of the Snodgrass instance, Hamme said, "the suit is indicative of a growing wave of resistance to these drug stings."

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