Stranger than fiction: Cop, 25, paddled in school

A 25-year-old police officer working undercover as a student at a high school in Texas took swats from a paddle rather than attend a detention.

The Dallas Morning News reported in January 1989 the cop who had been posing as a student for four months got caught up in a campus “tardy freeze.”

The newspaper reported, “Faced with taking after-school detention – and missing a drug buy – or corporal punishment, the 25-year-old patrol officer – whom authorities have not identified – took a paddling from an assistant principal.”

“It's never happened before,” said police narcotics Lt Robert Owens.

“The drug buy was one of almost three dozen made by the undercover officer including purchases of marijuana, cocaine and LSD. Eleven of the 28 people sought by police as a result had been arrested,” the newspaper said.

The paddling of an under-cover cop reminds us of the episode of the TV series 21 Jump Street called Hell Week that was first aired a couple of months before the cop was assuming the position at high school. Investigating a rape on a college campus, three cops go under cover in two fraternities. Officer Tom Hanson, played by Johnny Depp, has to undergo a frat initiation ritual and gets his butt paddled.

21 Jump Street is often rebroadcast on digital television.

Picture and video credit: Fox.

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