A WELCOME RETURN FOR DARE IN DULUTH

Two years ago, on a bright spring evening, hundreds of fifth-graders
and their families piled into the Duluth Auditorium.

On stage, then-Police Chief Roger Waller was praising the benefits of
DARE - Drug Abuse Resistance Education - and how the program was able
to "teach young people to say no to drugs, to resist peer pressure and
to find alternatives to drug use." Then-Mayor Herb Bergson followed,
extolling DARE's knack for forging "life-long friendships" between
students and police officers, relationships that sometimes helped
"kids who were on the edge [get] back on track."

Despite the flow of glowing acclaim, in the days that followed that
graduation ceremony, the DARE program got axed in Duluth. The city
could no longer afford it, officials claimed.

"We were so short-staffed, we couldn't do it anymore," Waller recalled
this spring. "It was a joint decision made with the [Duluth school]
superintendent, with input from the principals. We had to cut back
somewhere."

Duluth's financial woes are as well-documented as the city's inability
to plow streets as quickly as it used to. Cuts constantly seem
necessary. But DARE? Isn't that a little like turning up the radio to
drown out a clunking sound from the engine? While it's easy to ignore
a symptom, a full-blown emergency down the road can be far more costly.

Like an oil change or tune-up, DARE is proven preventive maintenance.
Hard numbers are tough to come by. Just how do you count the hundreds
of thousands of Duluth kids or the millions of American, Canadian and
other youths who've made good choices over the years and who didn't
get into trouble because they remembered what that cop said who
visited their classroom once a week for a year?

A survey conducted last year by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police -
the latest of countless studies to gauge DARE's effectiveness - found
nearly unanimous support for a program born in 1982 on the mean
streets of Los Angeles. In 221 schools:

* 93 percent of students agreed they learned new ways to make good and
informed decisions about using - or not using - alcohol, tobacco or
drugs.

* 96 percent of parents felt DARE had positive effects on their
children's attitudes and decision-making.

* 97 percent of teachers felt good about having officers in their
classrooms.

* 96 percent of principals felt the program fully met
theirprofessional educational standards and practices.

That's all A's. And all good arguments for bringing DARE back to
Duluth.

Which was precisely what new Police Chief Gordon Ramsay did this
school year.

"While our staffing today is not much different than it was in 2006
when DARE was cut, I am committed tocommunity-based programs that
focus on prevention and youth," Ramsay told me in an e-mail. "I feel
strongly we need to do all we can to educate and prevent problems
before they occur."

"It was not a matter of additional money," he said. "It [was] about
prioritizing."

Those priorities included leaving open several of the police
department's sergeant positions to allow for more community officers -
including their return, after three-year absences, to Duluth's
Lakeside, Lester Park and Woodland neighborhoods. It included the
coming return of the department's juvenile bureau, dormant for
budgetary reasons since 2003. (The bureau investigates wrongdoing
involving suspects younger than 18, a demographic "responsible for a
disproportionate amount of crime," Ramsay said. The bureau hopes to
turn that trend.)

And they included bringing back DARE, a $75,000-a-year commitment to
cover an officer's salary and benefits. Most supplies, T-shirts for
the kids and other expenses are paid for by Twin Ports DARE, a
grassroots nonprofit led by a local business owner.

"We heard from a lot of people the DARE program was important, and I
personally felt it was important," said Deputy Police Chief John
Beyer, one of the original instructors when DARE started in Duluth in
1992. "I look at my days of doing DARE as the highlight of my career.
I knew I was making a difference."

Duluth's DARE program is a one-officer show this year. Bob Olson "is
the lone ranger," Beyer said. He's bouncing between schools now. In
the summer he'll patrol the Lakewalk on a mountain bike. DARE is being
taught in Duluth this year in sixth grade rather than fifth. The
change was wisely made so a whole class of students wouldn't be missed
by last year's hiatus.

Statewide in Minnesota, DARE is taught to 73,196 students by 183
police departments and sheriff's offices - at last count. The way it's
taught has been updated nine times over the years and today includes
not only education about alcohol and general drug use, but also about
bullying, the dangers of methamphetamine, the growing abuse of
prescription drugs found in homes, Internet safety and gang violence.

"We're continuing to build as times change," said Kathi Ackerman, the
executive director of Minnesota DARE. "The focus includes life skills
and decision-making nowadays, too."

In Duluth, the focus again includes making sure there are DARE
graduations held at the DECC, whether the spring evenings are bright
or not.

Waller said the plan all along was to bring the program back this year
in the sixth grade because it "builds strong relationships between
kids and uniformed police officers. There's nothing better than that
program," he said.

And there's no reason Duluth should ever consider axing it again. No
matter how loudly the city's budget is clunking.