On the morning of December 13, 2012, the earth and the sky moved at a furious pace while my wife and I were putting on clothes we would normally reserve for funerals or weddings, all in what felt like slow motion. Earlier, when we dropped our younger children off for school, we hugged each of them a little bit longer than normal, and watched with eyes swollen from consecutive tearful and sleepless nights as they walked toward their school security gates.
Later that morning, as we sat in the car outside of the Murrieta Southwest Justice Center, I turned to Catherine and told her, "Let's go get our son back."
"You know, Mama, the kids here love it," a female officer told Catherine when she called the juvenile hall that first evening to make arrangements to drop off Jesse's meds. "They get three square meals and a bed. They love it here, and they keep coming back." The implication stung Catherine: that the kids locked inside – including her son – were already criminals, headed for a life of incarceration.
That was also the message of the district attorney's office in the courthouse two days later. According to Doug and Catherine, as all of the families somberly gathered to see their children for the first time since the arrest, Senior Deputy District Attorney Blaine Hopp strode into the center of the crowd. "This should be a wake-up call to all of you. Your children are drug dealers," he announced. "But this is an opportunity to save them," he added, inviting parents to speak with him before the proceedings began. To the Snodgrasses' surprise, many did. That didn't stop Hopp from arguing to the judge that each child posed a danger to the community and should therefore stay in custody longer – a frightening prospect to parents and kids alike.
When Jesse's turn came, he was charged with two felonies, one for each marijuana sale. Hopp argued that Jesse should remain locked up for an additional month, until his next court date – even though the probation department, having reviewed his history, had recommended his release. From their seats, the Snodgrasses listened aghast as Hopp lambasted their son as a menace to society, and got their first glimpse of Jesse in his prisonissued orange jumpsuit. He didn't return their gaze. Jesse had regressed after spending three days and two nights in the juvenile prison system. And while incarcerated, he'd struggled to process Daniel's betrayal. "I thought we were really good friends," he kept mumbling to his fellow inmates, who had to explain the situation to him. When Jesse had finally been escorted into court, his expression was blank. Although desperate to see his parents, his eyes skipped right over them without recognition, a behavior they hadn't seen since his childhood. When the judge announced his immediate release, Jesse showed no sign that he had heard or understood.
Rolling Stone: The Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass
This is the scene that has been played out every December for several years now in Riverside County, California. Each year the Riverside Sheriff's Department makes a huge public spectacle of the latest "drug ring" they broke up in yet another school district, usually involving about two dozen kids. And like Jesse, a high number of those kids arrested are kids who are classified as disabled, and unlike Jesse, the majority of the kids are minorities.
And in Jesse's case, they made sure they were able to get a made-for-tv picture of him being frog marched to jail.
And writing that last sentence makes my eyes sting with tears from a combination of sadness and outrage.
With many of these children, the District Attorney's office has successfully argued to judges that the kids are a menace to society, and must be locked up for extended periods of time. These children spent the holidays behind bars.
Now here's the good news. And it's very good news.
The Riverside Sheriff's Department's annual high school undercover drug sting program has finally been stopped in its tracks. They found no school district that was willing to participate.
Last year, San Diego's similar undercover sting operation went away, and the Los Angeles Unified School District banned these operations before Jesse's arrest, so enormous progress is being made.
The Riverside and San Diego Jump Street programs were halted because what happened in Temecula became a national story, and it happened through Daily Kos. We asked for an army, and the army showed up in orange.
And they showed up in the form of the Drug Policy Alliance, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the American Civil Liberties Union, and too many others to list here.
The day will come when undercover drug stings in schools are finally a shameful thing of the past. They will be banned in every school district, in every state, because it is child abuse. And you will be able to say that you ended this child abuse.
But in the meantime, on behalf of our family, the two dozen children who won't be entrapped and locked up, and their families who won't be thrown into a season of hell, thank you, and happy holidays.
For background on our family's story...
Rolling Stone magazine: The Entrapment of Jesse Snodgrass.
VICE: The War on Kids.
Follow us on Facebook.