March 10, 2001

Billy Bryne, Chairman

Cobb County Commission

100 Cherokee St

Marietta, GA 30090

Sir:

Run Children Run is a program designed to teach young people the personal responsibility of choice. One choice we encourage is participation in community politics as a positive statement about the type of nation they want America to become. The Richard L. Kirksey, Jr. Memorial Foundation sponsors this educational project to build confidence and competence in their ability to represent their interest. Although separated from us by time, space and technology, Amos (2: 6-7) prophesied in a time much like the present. He spoke about poor defenseless children, victims at the mercy of the powerful in an uncaring world. Currently, no place is more uncaring of its children than the State of Georgia, particularly metropolitan Atlanta with its huge black population, which epitomizes Moab of which Amos spoke. Gov. Roy Barnes and the legislature are avid supporters of the "prison for profit industry" and they see children as the means to increase their bottom line.

Accounts regarding a drug sting in a Cobb County high school (AJC 3-6-01) paint a very ugly picture of backstabbing adults that can only damage the little trust young people have left. A distressing revelation of deception and entrapment of children by trained adult undercover police officers is truly unbelievable. Even more disturbing is the fact that this undercover officer had the run of the school in order to victimize these children. Several students have been arrested and charged with drug offenses. Arresting children under such circumstances is an ethical violation of the worst sort and should be investigated and appropriate actions taken against all responsible parties.

Like something out of the movie, "Plain Clothes" or the TV show "21 Jump Street," the public is finally informed that months ago the Marietta/Cobb/Smyrna Narcotics Unit placed a boyish looking 24 year old undercover policeman in a local high school to run a drug sting on students. Describing his efforts to set students up, the Mod-Squader said, "I knew I had to fit in, make the kid trust me and then take them to jail." According to students, "He was trying to buy [drugs] from everyone. He would come up and ask where he could get it." As many as two drug deals a day were said to have gone down in parking lots and in some homes.

To help fool students, police set-up a fake home in the neighborhood complete with mom and pop. Authorities are trying to make it seem as though the undercover cop was meeting the same obligations of a real student, actually going to class and struggling with homework just like the kids he was trying to bust. The truly horrifying and outrageous thing in all of this is no one has considered the damage that could be done to those children unwittingly drawn into this disgusting plot. What of those who had their faith and values compromised in ways authorities will never acknowledged. Who will take responsibility for any drug overdose, speeding death, life of crime, suicide, destroyed family or lost life that results from this chapter in the "War on Drugs."

My concern is justified by Principal Jill Kalina's description of the affect of the 24 year old "deep cover operative" on young high school females, "He was very attractive. The girls were always gathered around him." Looking back on the sex scandal among Rockdale County high school students, how much of the undercover cop's activities involved sex with students to obtain information about drugs? How many young girls with low self-esteem or young boys with homosexual tendencies did he victimize to set-up contacts with those he targeted? How strong were his lures of cash on poor students in desperate need of money to make contacts and supply drugs for quick profits?

Then there is the selective process of deciding which children will go to jail. No top athletes, students of parents with money and political connections or students favored by staff members were among those targeted. If there were, they dropped as targets once it was known they were caught up in the sting. Not one "most likely to succeed" was snared in this drag net. This rogue operation was designed to entrap unsuspecting poor minority children and fast tract them into prison.

Our children are prey for the "prison for profit industry;" they are the new millennium slaves filling prisons to provide rural white communities with jobs and tax dollars. When school administrators allow adult police officers to enter our schools expressly to worm and weasel their way into their lives with the clear intention of locking them up, children are totally without protection. This type of adult deception deprives children of their Constitutional rights of "due process" and "equal protection." How do children develop trust when faced with such a conspiratorial system of adults who gang up to trick them. The most likely victims of such police tactics are poor minority children, such as the black 13 year-old kept locked up in Fulton County's juvenile detention for five weeks because no one gave a shit and the 7 year-old boy sentenced to detention for having a kitchen knife in his book bag by a Gwinnett County judge.

Correction Corp. of America (CCA) built two prisons in Georgia without any contract to house state prisoners. Unable to imprison enough Georgians to supply CCA's private prisons, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill that is supposed to "restrict the building of private prisons." Like the Georgia Confederate state flag bill, instead of restricting, this bill gives private prisons power to bring prisoners from other states into Georgia to fill unneeded prisons and encourages the building of more. The southern "chain gangs" are back and our children are being educated to fill those waiting vacancies.

Sir, children are under tremendous pressure from parents, school, church, and government to conform to all kinds of changing standards. Then, there are peer and other social pressures on them to be individuals. In a world dominated by "undercover narcs," jocks, Christian Clubs, geeks and freaks, how does a child learn to trust? Amos spoke of such transgressions back then but today in a Christian nation, the church is silent. Luke 18:16 Christ said, "suffer little children come onto me." Run Children Run believes our children are slated to remain a criminal under class, if nothing is done to address issues raised here. Sir, for young people's sake, we pray you will conduct a thorough investigation of this matter, correct abuses and establish procedures to prevent any reoccurrence. Citizens of Georgia await your prompt response.

Sincerely,

John Burl Smith