Buena Park DAREs Youths to Say No to Gangs

Sitting on picnic tables covered with gang graffiti, about 30 people listened Saturday morning to Buena Park officials kick off the most aggressive anti-gang program in the city’s history.

Only a few children 10 to 14 years old--the target group of the program--signed up at the event, which also drew a state senator and many Buena Park city officials.

“I would have liked to have seen 10,000 people here,” state Sen. Cecil N. Green (D-Norwalk) said. “This is a good program. It will grow.”

Parents Concerned

Parents who brought their children to the 10 a.m. event at William Peak Park said they have heard enough lately to make them worry about gangs in their city.

“What with those incidents that happened here, like that lady getting killed,” said Carmen Wingert, referring to the May 28 gang-related slaying of 82-year-old Cornelia Mitchell, “when you think of those things, you think of big cities. When it gets here, it’s getting pretty close.”

Wingert brought her grandson, 10-year-old Todd Hughes, to sign up for the 17-week program. Todd said he knows of boys his age who associate with gangs. “But they don’t do killings or anything like that,” he said.

Beginning Monday, three officers with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program will talk to children in city elementary schools about gangs.

“We take seasoned officers off the street (and) move them from an enforcement mode into a teaching mode,” said DARE Officer Rich McMillen. “That way, they have their life experience to draw on.”

The officers will spend a full day at each of the 10 schools, he said. They will talk to students at recess, lunch and during one-hour seminars presented for sixth-graders who sign up.

Children 10 to 14 were targeted because they are most susceptible to peer pressure, McMillen said.

“They’re at a state in their lives where they are going to have to start making choices,” he said. “They think everyone in junior high is smoking dope when in reality it’s not true. You can be popular without yielding to peer pressure to join gangs or do drugs.”

Program Not New

Actually, the program has been in Buena Park since 1986. Last year, in fact, DARE officers contacted 7,340 students. But until now, DARE has never focused on gangs.

The program, patterned after one in Los Angeles, so far has cost $8,500 in community donations, McMillen said. The larger costs--officers’ salaries, training and benefits--are paid by the city and haven’t been calculated, he said.

Mayor Rhonda J. McCune said the DARE program does more than just give out anti-gang information to grade-school children.

“It isn’t just that we’re teaching the sixth-graders about drugs and gangs,” she said. “What I saw was a rapport developing between the kids and the policemen. A lot of them have never had close contact with a cop. They have a relationship with a real cop and see he’s just a human.”

John Conley, a gang specialist with the district attorney’s office, said the trend is to fight gangs before they begin.

“The experts seem to think it’s a lot easier to prevent than to cure,” he said.