Family’s Lawsuit Against School District Highlights Cruelty and Ineffectiveness of Undercover Narcotics Operations in Schools
Jesse Snodgrass, the teenage special needs student arrested in an undercover police operation, will receive his high school diploma at the Chaparral High School graduation ceremony on Thursday, June 5, at 6:30 p.m.
The February 2014 Rolling Stone article, “The Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass” details how Jesse, who suffers from a range of disabilities, was falsely befriended by a police officer who repeatedly asked the boy to provide him drugs. After more than three weeks, 60 text messages and repeated hounding by the officer, Jesse was able to buy half a joint from a homeless man he then gave to his new -– and only –- “friend,” who had given him 20 dollars weeks before.
Jesse did it once again before finally refusing to accommodate the officer, at which point the officer broke off all ties with the child. Shortly thereafter, Jesse was arrested at Chaparral High School in front of his classmates as part of a sting that nabbed 22 students in all, many of them children with special needs.