DARE: It’s Working and in Trouble : Police Anti-Drug Project at Schools Praised but Council Is Cool

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates views it as the “ultimate answer” to the drug problem. School principals love it. Several police agencies are copying it. And the federal government has expressed interest in using the program as a national model.

But all is not completely well with DARE, the Police Department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education project, which sends uniformed police officers into elementary school classrooms to teach children how to say no to dope pushers.

For one thing, the City Council has so far refused to provide money for an expansion of the program that is at the top of Gates’ long-term crime-fighting agenda.

And one member of the Police Commission, Barbara Schlei, said that there is no evidence in hand to suggest that the program--which takes up $750,000 of the Police Department’s budget--is working effectively.

Schlei, a frequent critic of Gates, also said that the program raises a “civil liberties” issue of whether police officers should be involved in imparting values and attitudes to young people--even on a subject as clear-cut as the dangers of drug involvement.

Gates’ brainchild, DARE is in its second year on the campuses of elementary schools throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District.

About 22,000 fifth- and sixth-grade students have completed the semester-long DARE program. Another 110,000 kindergarten-through-fourth-grade students have been introduced to DARE at once-a-year school assemblies.

Teaching from a lesson plan prepared by school district administrators, the officers focus instruction on “peer resistance training, self-concept improvement and value decisions concerning respect for the law and personal safety,” according to the department’s program manual.

The program for fifth- and sixth-graders involves 17 weekly lessons, with titles such as “Drug Use and Misuse,” “Resistance Techniques: Ways to Say No,” “Building Self-Esteem,” “Managing Stress Without Taking Drugs” and “Media Influences on Drug Use.”

As part of the course, students are required to participate in skits in which they develop different ways to say “no” to peers who offer them drugs.

In a break from past anti-drug efforts, which law enforcement experts now agree were virtually useless, the program does not include the old “Reefer Madness”-style scare films that students often found humorous.

“Kids are more sophisticated nowadays,” said DARE commanding officer, Lt. Rodger Coombs. “I remember when I graduated from high school in 1962 and seeing some film where this lady was smoking marijuana, and here she was a nice girl, and then she was a space cadet after one cigarette. Kids aren’t going to buy that nowadays.”

Gates believes that a sophisticated, credible DARE program is “the only answer . . . the ultimate answer” to cutting off society’s appetite for drugs.

“That’s where the real solution (to the drug problem) lies, in doing something about the demand,” Gates said.

“You still have this whole generation and a half of people who are into drugs, and into drugs deeply--a lot more than people realize,” he added. “They’re going to move on. Then you bring the new generation on, which is not drug-oriented, not involved to the extent this generation and a half are, and hopefully that will reduce the problem.”

Several police departments--as far away as Honolulu and as near as West Covina, Manhattan Beach and Pasadena--have sent officers to Los Angeles to receive DARE training. They are now in the process of implementing the program in their jurisdictions.

James K. Stewart, executive director of the National Institute for Justice, the crime research and prevention arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, came to Los Angeles last year to watch DARE officers working with children in the classroom. Stewart said he was “very impressed” by the program and called it the only one of its kind in the country.

‘Well-Integrated’

“There are some programs that have police officers in the classroom . . . who come in and talk about the terror of drugs,” Stewart said. “But there are none that are as well-integrated (into the educational curriculum) as this one.”

Stewart said his office is sending DARE brochures to police departments and school districts around the country, informing them of the Los Angeles Police Department’s enthusiasm for the program.

Gates has also pitched the DARE program to Nancy Reagan, but the chief is still waiting for a reply from the First Lady, who has made drug abuse prevention one of her pet projects.

“It’s awful hard to get to her,” the chief said.

Debra Balfour, staff assistant in Mrs. Reagan’s projects’ office, said: “Mrs. Reagan makes it a point not to endorse programs like this because there are thousands of them that come in.”

Lack of Interest

Of more concern to Gates is the fact that he is also having problems getting the Los Angeles City Council interested in the program--at least from a financial standpoint.

On March 29--and at the Police Department’s request--the council presented to DARE administrators a resolution praising the program. But it still has not given a penny to help fund it.

“I’m not encouraged by the fact that we’ve not gotten any help from the political leadership around here,” Gates said.

DARE’s $765,545 budget--all of which goes to officers’ salaries--comes straight out of the Police Department’s regular expenditures, forcing the removal of 15 officers from the streets to do the teaching. In addition, the budget pays the salaries of an administrative staff that includes a lieutenant, two sergeants, a detective and a secretary.

At present, each of the 15 officer-teachers goes to five different campuses a week, so that the program covers 75 campuses each semester.

Sought Expansion

Last year, as part of its budget request to the City Council, the Police Department asked to expand the program to 44 officers so that DARE courses could be run simultaneously at all 220 elementary schools in the district. The proposal would have cost in the neighborhood of $1.5 million annually.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who describes DARE as “one of the all-time great programs the city has ever had,” said she was prepared in the Finance and Revenue Committee last year “to come in with a motion to provide them with a good portion of it, if not all” of the money Gates requested for DARE.

But she said the department agreed to seek private financing before coming back to the council.

“They have not come back,” Picus said.

Police Department spokesman Cmdr. William Booth said that the private sector, including the Coca-Cola Co., has been “very responsive” to department solicitations for assistance, providing brochures and other educational materials.

But Booth said that private organizations “have persistent questions: They want to know why the city doesn’t fund a program that is this important. And it’s getting more and more difficult to answer that question.”

‘Excellent Program’

Councilman Marvin Braude, chairman of the Police, Fire and Public Safety Committee, said he also believes that DARE is “an excellent program.” But he thinks it would be just as effective--and less costly--with police-trained experts instead of sworn officers as teachers.

But, Gates said, the presence of uniformed police officers is essential in establishing the program’s credibility with school children.

“Fifth- and sixth-graders in our society today, they know more about this whole (drug) issue than the vast majority of the teachers do,” he said. “So the teachers are not in a position to do it. It’s the police officers who are.”

School district officials, meanwhile, are more than willing to have the officers teach kids about drugs.

“Principals, teachers, youngsters, parents--everybody just thinks it’s a very positive program,” said Dr. Ruth Rich, the district’s chief health educator, who helped develop the DARE curriculum for the Police Department. “It has exceeded my expectations.”

Principals Want More

The only fault principals could find with DARE is that it lasts only one semester.

“We would have appreciated having it for a longer period of time,” said Annette Seydel, principal of Atwater Avenue School. “A one-semester program with one grade level targeted is not enough.”

Seydel said that DARE training should also be initiated earlier, at about the third- or fourth-grade level.

“My husband is involved at Van Nuys High School, and kids there say they start (with drugs or alcohol) at around 8 or 9 (years old),” Seydel said.

Although the Police Commission has never taken a vote on the DARE program, commissioners interviewed were generally supportive. Except for Schlei, who questions the program both on fiscal grounds and for the philosophical, “civil liberties” issue she believes it raises.

Although Schlei agrees with the program’s objectives, she questions whether it is working. She favors an immediate study that would track a group of elementary school students through high school and compare them with a control group to see if the DARE program is having an impact.

Looking for Evidence

“We could be funding a program at $750,000 annually . . . before we have a clue whether this program does the slightest good at all,” she said.

The Police Department has agreed to initiate a five-year study, of the sort proposed by Schlei, at an expected cost of $60,000.

Herbert F. Boeckmann, a San Fernando Valley automobile dealer and a member of the Police Commission’s budget subcommittee along with Schlei, also favors getting the study under way as soon as possible.

“(DARE) seems to be working . . . but from a fiscal concern, we want to find results,” Boeckmann said. “We want to see if there’s an ongoing benefit.”

Schlei said the program also raises the “civil liberties” question: “Do we want our military and paramilitary teaching moral values in our schools in a democracy?”

Questions Direction

“Nobody can disagree that our terrific police officers are the best possible people to teach kids something that we can all agree about as an attitude, that is, that kids have to stay away from drugs,” Schlei added.

“But once you start teaching attitudes, what about attitudes that aren’t as clear-cut? Is it a step we’re really ready to take?”

Robert Talcott, a criminal defense lawyer who, like Schlei, was appointed to the Police Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley and is generally regarded as a liberal on civil liberties issues, said he does not share her philosophical concern.

“I have no problem with the concept of any public organization having access to affecting attitudes,” Talcott said. “To me, it would be the same as if a fireman came to the school and instructed them on safety.”

The school district’s Dr. Rich strongly defended the role of the police on elementary school campuses.

‘Positive Role’

“That’s where the attitudes are formed,” she said. “(School children) have the opportunity there to see the police officers in a positive, helping role, whereas maybe they see them in a negative role out in the street.”

Added Hugo Fukushima, principal of McKinley Avenue School, which had DARE officers on campus last year: “Great public relations were fostered between the school children and the officer. And with our location in the (high-crime) inner city, it was great having the officer on the school grounds for all-around purposes.”

Schlei was also critical of a study prepared by the Los Angles-based Evaluation and Training Institute that attempted to assess students’ attitudes after they completed the DARE program.

Students examined in the study were shown 19 general statements about drugs and personal behavior and then asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with each. The answers were then measured according to the “appropriate” response. The study found that students were more likely to give the appropriate response on drug-related questions after having completed the DARE program.

Statements Troublesome

But some of the statements contained in the study troubled Schlei.

Concerning one of the statements--”Police officers would rather catch you doing something wrong than try to help you”--Schlei said, “Is that teaching about drugs, or is that teaching about attitudes toward police?” she said.

Another statement--”It is better to keep your feelings to yourself”--prompted the commissioner to say:

“I’m not sure I know which is the preferred answer, but I’m not sure that, in a democratic society, we want to entrust to our police the determination as to whether to teach our children whether . . . it is better to keep your feelings to yourself,” Schlei said.

Gates, meanwhile, believes that it is entirely appropriate for the Police Department to play a role in young people’s socialization process in the school system.

Right Ones for Task

“Police have an absolute responsibility to take the expertise they have and utilize that expertise in dealing on a very broad basis with the social problems that are confronting society today,” Gates said. “Because . . . when nobody else deals with them, the police have to deal with them.”

The DARE program, Gates said, may only be the beginning of an increased role he wants the Police Department to play in directing young people away from criminal activity.

“I’m quite anxious to get into this whole arena of dealing with kids and assisting in building a resistance within kids to move in the direction of criminal careers,” he said.