Lessons learned, but not always good ones

Probation officer Jeff Probasco has spent 24 years working with teenage drug dealers, gang members and thieves. The one thing he always told his own son: Don’t let me see you come home in the back of a police car.

Thank goodness Dad was at work last week when three police officers in two cars brought home 12-year-old Jeffrey Jr., crying in the back seat of one of the cruisers.

His offense? Violation of California Penal Code Section 640, subsection B4. Specifically, eating Doritos on a bus in Diamond Bar.

Jeffrey was snagged in an undercover operation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Foothill Transit Police. He was fingered by a plainclothes officer posing as a passenger. That got him kicked off the bus, questioned, issued a ticket and hauled home by police.

Later this month, his parents will have to take off work and pull him out of school so they can appear in Juvenile Court, where a first offense typically draws a $25 fine.

But at least he’s not in trouble with Mom or Dad. “I think it’s ridiculous, to be honest,” said his mother, Laverne. “There are other things the police can be doing, rather than writing a 12-year-old up for eating chips.

“They said they could tell he’s a good kid; he was honest and respectful. But they’re taking a no-tolerance approach” to after-school snacks on the city bus.

Foothill Transit officials said officers routinely board buses on routes near schools to warn kids that they will be ticketed and kicked off the bus for eating, yelling, playing music or acting wild. “We can’t have any violations on board that are disruptive or disturb the operator,” said Felicia Friesema.

Jeffrey never got a warning. He’s not a regular bus rider. His mom usually picks him up after school, but on Jan. 30, he was going home with a friend, so he joined the throng of kids waiting for Route 853 outside Diamond Bar’s Lorbeer Middle School. He said he was finishing his tortilla chips as he sat down; then he stuffed the empty bag in his jacket pocket. The bus had only gone a few stops when three uniformed police officers boarded.

“They kind of walked on and started questioning everybody,” Jeffrey said, sounding like a kid who’s spent time around law enforcement officers. “They’re looking to see if anybody had food on them. They’re like ‘Who’s ever eating, you’d better give yourself up now, or we’ll find you and you’ll be in more trouble.’ So I just raised my hand.”

The officers -- one sheriff’s deputy and two transit cops -- escorted Jeffrey and two other kids off the bus. One was released without a ticket; it turned out he was just chewing gum. The other hitched a ride home with a friend.

“I was crying in the back of the police car,” Jeffrey told me later. “Like oh no, I’m going to get in so much trouble. . . . But the officers were comforting. And my mom told me I did the right thing.”

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Lt. Kevin Hannigan said the department often assigns undercover officers to bus lines that serve middle and high school campuses. “We go out whenever the drivers have problems -- fare evasion, talking loud, eating, playing music. . . . Unruly children scare away the regular customers who ride the bus.”

Although deploying three cops to collar a seventh-grader for eating chips seems like overkill to me, I get what Hannigan means. I don’t want to ride a bus full of screaming kids with the floor sticky from spilled Gatorade and the seats dusted with Doritos crumbs. Even Jeffrey said his fellow passengers were a rowdy bunch -- yelling, shimmying up the poles, doing pull-ups on the overhead grab bar -- until the officers arrived.

But it’s hard to square the “zero tolerance” attitude about eating chips on a bus in Diamond Bar with the laissez fare approach in another case of youthful lawbreaking that I wrote about two weeks ago.

In that case, 30 kids swarmed a South Los Angeles 7-Eleven store, swiping stuff from shelves, knocking over displays, and frightening employees and customers before running off. Store owner Sundeep Bhatia told me he was particularly incensed because it happened in the midst of community celebrations of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The store’s security cameras captured the commotion and -- after I wrote a column about it -- officials from nearby Dorsey High viewed the film and were able to identify a half-dozen of the kids.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency about holding them accountable. “We’re handling things on a case-by-case basis,” Dorsey Principal George Bartleson told me. Possible consequences could include “citations, detentions, suspensions or parent conferences,” he said, declining to tell me how or even whether any students have been disciplined.

“It would just be another negative story going out,” he said. “We like to focus on the positives.”

He told me campus police have not turned the kids’ names over to the LAPD. “We do want our students to be good citizens,” he said. “They’re teenagers though. We call their attention to it and make sure we take ownership of what we do. There are consequences for one’s actions and they’ll be handled appropriately by the school.”

I’m not sure what all that means, except that none of the shoplifters in that group will be riding home -- this time, at least -- in a police cruiser’s back seat.

Over in Diamond Bar, Jeffrey told me he learned a lesson from his encounter with police. “I won’t eat on the bus again.”

I wonder what lesson those kids from Dorsey High are learning?

sandy.banks@latimes.com