DARE MESSAGE STILL RESOUNDS

Outgoing Police Chief Reflects On The Program That He
Championed

PITTSFIELD -- As his days wind down in Pittsfield, outgoing Police
Chief Anthony J. Riello has been spending his final week revisiting a
program that he started 20 years ago.

Riello has been attending fifth-grade DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance
Education) graduations in the city's elementary schools. Yesterday,
he was at Egremont Elementary, where, as Berkshire County's first
DARE officer, Riello started the anti-drug, -gang and -violence
initiative in Pittsfield in 1987.

"I wanted to be here," said Riello, who will officially take over as
Falmouth's new police chief on Saturday. "I felt that, in my last
week, it was appropriate for me to see this through."

Police Officer Michael Ortega, DARE officer for Pittsfield Public
Schools, told those in attendance that Riello had even asked him to
accelerate the 10-week fifth-grade course so that he could attend the
graduation before leaving for Falmouth.

Riello, who has been Pittsfield's police chief for 11 years, attended
a second DARE graduation ceremony yesterday afternoon at Stearns
Elementary School and similar exercises at Capeless and Crosby
elementary schools on Tuesday. A fifth ceremony is scheduled for
today at St. Mark's School.

A former teacher who volunteered to be Pittsfield's first DARE
officer when the city began the program, he said that Egremont was
chosen as the first site of the initiative because "it's just the way
the schedule fell."

Whether it was the setting, or the program itself, it was obvious
that he enjoyed yesterday's ceremony.

When it was his turn to speak to Egremont's 86 DARE graduates, Riello
left the speaker's podium and sat on the edge of a stage in the
school cafeteria where teachers, administrators and the other invited
guests had been placed.

"I want to say what I said 20 years ago, that there is a war on
drugs," he said. "It's unfortunate that it's always the best and the
brightest that have to fight that war. ... Twenty years later, I
think we're winning that war.

"You're in the front lines in the war on drugs. Say 'no' to drugs and
know that we're here for you."

At the end of the ceremony, Egremont's fifth-graders presented Riello
with a beach towel on which Egremont Eagles had been written in the
school colors, blue and gold.

"Chief, we know you'll be very happy in your new job," said Egremont
fifth-grader Ciera Atherton. "We hope you have the time to use this
towel at the beach."