What Happens When An Entire City Becomes A Drug-Free School Zone?
BY CHRISTIE THOMPSON
It was a muggy night in June 2004 when someone approached Tyrone King on the street corner in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The guy was looking to buy a few “slabs” of cocaine. King struggled with drug addiction, and said the guy offered to “get him high” if he helped him out. The two walked less than a block, where someone looking to sell lived on the fourth floor of a red brick apartment building.
The buyer turned out to be an undercover cop with the Bridgeport narcotics team. Police claim King took $20 inside the apartment and returned with two small bags containing .14 grams of crack. King plead not guilty to the charges, but a jury convicted him of two felonies: one for selling narcotics, and one for doing it within 1500 feet of a school.
Several hundred yards away from the dealer’s apartment was Kolbe Cathedral High School. It didn’t matter that the deal took place at 10 pm, indoors, and well after Kolbe’s students had left for summer vacation. The undercover officer took the stand during King’s trial and simply pointed to a map. An investigator for the state’s attorney’s office told the jury he measured 911 feet between the apartment and the high school. That was all the prosecutors needed to prove.
Police could have pointed to any spot on that map of Bridgeport: almost the entire city falls within a drug-free zone. But had King committed the same crime in Canaan, Bridgewater, or any of Connecticut’s other suburbs or towns where drug-free zones cover relatively little ground, he likely would have faced one fewer felonies, and three fewer years in prison.
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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/04/14/3425658/the-true-price-of-drug-free-zones/
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