CHESAPEAKE TO CUT SCHOOL DARE PROGRAM

CHESAPEAKE -- To ensure that officers get pay raises, the Chesapeake Police
Department intends to cut a program that teaches thousands of children
about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, officials said Tuesday. Since 1987,
the city's Drug Abuse Resistance Education -- or D.A.R.E. -- program has
sent officers into elementary and middle schools, providing instruction
sprinkled with real-life stories, and building trust with children.

Aside from instruction about drugs and alcohol, the program teaches
children to resist peer pressures to start smoking and join gangs.

But now the department, under budget pressure, plans to put four D.A.R.E.
officers into the field, eliminating the need to hire four street officers
and saving $121,500, spokesman Tommy Kullman said.

The two remaining D.A.R.E. officers aren't enough to continue a program
that taught more than 6,700 youngsters during the 2000-01 school year,
officers said. Those officers will be reassigned to the street.

Aside from cutting positions, the department has eliminated funding to hook
up dozens of laptop computers, which would have allowed officers to run
record checks of suspects while on the road.

Kullman didn't know how much the department would save by eliminating
hook-up fees.

"We can't take people off the street, so they're going to cut D.A.R.E.,''
Kullman said. "And if Council cuts the budget any more, the department is
going to have to cut more.''

The D.A.R.E. program is taught in the fifth and seventh grades. In fifth,
students are taught one 45-minute class a week for 16 weeks. In seventh,
the class is taught as part of the health curriculum -- every day for two
weeks.

Officers said it's hard to gauge in statistics how many students the
program kept off drugs, but that the course allows them to befriend students.

Just in the last school year, D.A.R.E. Officer Bennie Tiner was invited to
six high school graduations and two weddings from former students who
remember Tiner had an open ear for them.

"I may not agree with it, but I understand it,'' said Tiner, an original
program officer who substituted last school year, of the budget cut. "But I
know we made a huge difference.''

"We get an emotional bond with these kids,'' said Officer Joe Justice, a
nine-year veteran and a D.A.R.E. cop for four years. "Who is going to fill
that gap when we leave?''

Tiner said Chesapeake would be the only South Hampton Roads city without a
D.A.R.E. program.

Losing the officers could leave school administrators with a void because
none of the teachers is certified to instruct the course, said Anita James,
the district's director of elementary curriculum and instruction.