GAFFNEY DARES TO REVERSE HIS POLICE COMMISSIONER

Political and civilian second-guessers recently thwarted Suffolk Police
Commissioner John Gallagher's effort to move 34 officers out of 17-week
teaching assignments in the schools and restore them to street duty.

The move was part of Gallagher's sweeping effort to wring peak efficiency
out of one of the highest-paid police forces in the nation. After examining
the Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE) program, Gallagher decided
it duplicated a new state-mandated curriculum that would make much of the
officer-taught material redundant. What's more, he wasn't convinced that
DARE was doing the job. A National Research Council panel on juvenile crime
earlier this year concluded DARE had little impact on young people and
cited a study that found suburban DARE graduates actually showed a slight
increase in drug use.

At first, County Executive Robert Gaffney seemed to support his
commissioner, but that was before opponents got organized. A local
parent-teacher organization launched a pro- DARE letter-writing drive, and
Legis. Allan Binder (R-Huntington) called a public hearing. Legis. Angie
Carpenter (R-West Islip) and Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor) started
tossing resolutions into the legislative hopper. Last week, Gaffney
directed Gallagher to continue assigning officers to the DARE program at
least through the 2001-02 school year.

Said Gaffney: "All of the information needed to ensure that this is the
best course of action is not yet available, and therefore the withdrawal of
DARE officers from classrooms is premature." He suggested continued study,
and Gallagher drew comfort from that, predicting the study "will confirm
some of the reservations I have about the program." But, he added, as a
freshly chastised subordinate must, "I'm not going to prejudge that." It
was a bad day for the police commissioner, a worse day for Gaffney.