POLICE WARN: KIDS KNOW DRUGS ARE EVERYWHERE

Editor's note: Herald reporter Tara Stapleton is writing about her
experiences in Southington's Citizens Police Academy.

SOUTHINGTON -- Bongs, crack pipes and coke lines.

These bits were enough to bring some life to the seventh week of the
Southington Citizen's Police Academy Wednesday.

A quaint class of about six remain for the voluntary law enforcement
class offered annually for area residents and this year, me. Although
more than half of the few of us left in the class are a group of mere
20-somethings, drug issues concerning children in town were enough for
us to find ourselves huffing "kids today," under our breath.

Officers Bernard Zawisza and Karen Apicella, both D.A.R.E officers,
displayed some features from a collection of bongs, pipes and other
paraphernalia that has accumulated in the department over time.
Another display case next to that paraphernalia held needles, spoons,
cocaine lines on glass, a pacifier (sometimes used as an inconspicuous
tool for taking drugs) and other various deceptive drug tools.

"If only they used their brains in school like they do when they build
these things," Apicella said as we surveyed some inventive and
resourceful homemade paraphernalia.

And while part of a parent's means for identifying a drug problem with
their child involves being competent in identifying some of these
clever tools, Zawisza and Apicella explained that problems between
parents and their children in town are an even further cry from
healthy than area residents might think.

Apicella recalled a recent incident where a teenage boy was arrested
for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. But hopes of inviting a
mother, livid from her son's actions, down to police headquarters,
were dashed when in stormed a mother irate at police officers. "You
have no right to arrest my son! He was just smoking pot!" yelled the
mother. The woman apparently even went as far as to suggest that the
police return the "pot" which was unfairly confiscated from her son.

"It gets discouraging sometimes," Apicella said of the encounters she
comes by. In her third year as a D.A.R.E educator, she claims it was
the D.A.R.E program that enticed her into police work. And despite
those discouraging times, Apicella said, pun intended, "Working with
kids is a high."

Zawisza and Apicella both told of the willingness kids have to open up
about the fact that drugs are readily available to them, but they both
explained that the details stop when it comes to giving out names due
to the fear they have of getting into trouble with those whose
identities they reveal.

In a poll that Apicella said she recently took from 100 students
(fifth and sixth graders), she said one third admitted to cigarette
smoking, slightly more admitted to trying some sort of drugs and
somewhere over 60 percent admitted to consuming alcohol on a regular
basis.

Substantiating her claims in the lack of discipline that parents have
and how purposeful discipline can be, Apicella said about 12 of the
100 kids said their parents would do nothing if they caught them being
involved in some sort of drug or alcohol use. And Apicella said that
those 12 kids were also the ones who admitted to doing basically all
of the drugs mentioned in the poll.

"Parents are afraid that if they discipline their kids that the kids
are going to alienate them," Apicella said.

Talk of the leniency parents give to their children today, triggered
the class to rehash and share memories of moms and dads flipping out
over trivial things and how we were all fearful of the dreaded mom and
her wooden spoon..f course those days were not long ago.

In a time where 90 percent of crime is somehow drug-related, according
to D.A.R.E statistics, Apicella stands by the much criticized D.A.R.E
program she is involved with. So the question arose yet again, posing
that all too familiar cry of "Where are the parents?" When drug
programs by the Drug Task Force or the D.A.R.E officers creates a
forum opportunity for the entire town of 38,000, Apicella said,
referring to a program she was involved with Tuesday night, "nobody
shows up." So when people stab at the D.A.R.E program, she said "That
comment aggravates me."