A Matter of Trust : Sting: The democratic principles taught in the classroom lose their meaning when police and schools use lies, deception and duplicity in an attempt to <i> do something </i> about drugs.

Another sting operation in San Diego schools.

Undercover police agents pose for six months as students in three San Diego high schools to ferret out drug dealers.

We read about the raids in the newspaper and are comforted. More self congratulation that San Diego moves aggressively to protect its children from the horror of drug abuse.

Let’s agree upon one thing: The cost to our society of drug abuse in terms of ruined lives, grieving families and crimes inflicted on others is incalculable.

Action must be taken to stem the momentum of this scourge.

Our hearts go out to those distraught parents who are daily witness to the deterioration of their addicted children.

But, in our enthusiasm to “do something about it,” we should look very carefully at the consequences of our actions.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Thomas Jefferson warned. Sometimes the vigilance needed to protect our freedom is painful. Protecting the values of a free people is never easy.

We have seen in East Germany how distrust permeated the very fabric of the community with fear and hate.

Throughout the Cold War, we have known that people in Soviet Bloc countries refused to talk openly for fear they would be informed upon. There was no trust.

But not in this country. Here we pride ourselves as people with a reputation of “speaking our minds” to anyone. Here the police are civil servants--friends who control automobile traffic, deliver babies on occasion, protect us from lawbreakers.

Trust.

That’s what we take for granted in this country.

Some of the things we say may be imprudent or hurtful or simply stupid. But that is our choice. We are free to make jackasses out of ourselves. We never doubt that is our constitutional right.

Living in a constitutional democracy means that sometimes lawbreakers go free.

Dictatorships are tidier in that respect. Their wrongdoers are meted out swift and often lethal punishment. But in dictatorships, there is subjectivity in determining “wrongdoers.”

We try not to cross that line in our democracy. We are a nation of laws whose ideal is to judge all people by identical standards.

So, finally, we return to the sting operation in the San Diego schools.

The head of the San Diego police narcotics task force is quoted as saying, “The previous raids have taught high school kids a lesson. Obviously, there’s a paranoia (among students) now.”

If the narcotics officer meant that the student paranoia was an indication of the success of the sting, the “benefits” of the sting warrant closer examination.

When our young people are taught to distrust their classmates, how then are we different from those totalitarian states we have traditionally abhorred?

There is a story that during the blitz of Britain in 1940 it was determined that the British anti-aircraft effort against the German bombers was ineffective. The shells could not reach the required altitude.

To save munitions, the shelling was discontinued. Immediately, the civilian population became extremely upset with the silence. The sound of the ack-ack obviously fulfilled their need to feel as if protection were being provided.

The anti-aircraft shelling was resumed and the people were comforted. The government accommodated the public need at only the cost of the shells.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government, to give the appearance that it was doing something, interned U.S. citizens of Japanese descent.

The damage to the integrity of our government and to the Japanese-American internees as a result of that effort to accommodate a purported need of the people is irreparable.

The stings are not just a police operation. Because the San Diego Police Department is an arm of city government, in effect, the stings are a cooperative effort of the City of San Diego and the San Diego Unified School District.

The city and the school district, by implementing the sting, are making the statement that there is a terrible drug abuse problem in the schools, and they are doing something about it.

Unfortunately, the benefits are dubious; the paranoia is real, however.

It is foolhardy to believe that young people can be taught democratic principles in a classroom and still retain a belief in those principles while observing lies, deception and duplicity around them in those same classrooms.

The living example of the school system and Police Department in acknowledged collusion to deceive them, no matter how noble the purpose, teaches the wrong lesson.

The city and the city schools find themselves in a dilemma. But they should be aware that standing firm against public frustration in order to serve the long-range best interests of students is also courageous.

Would the school system incorporate into its curriculum the premise that deceit is acceptable when seeking a desirable end?

Of course not.

Would the school system incorporate into its curriculum the premise that to foster distrust among one’s fellows in order to achieve a desirable end is acceptable?

Of course not.

Inculcating distrust in the minds of impressionable students is far more serious than lobbing futile shells at enemy aircraft.

San Diego Unified must find another way.