DARE GRADS GET TOUGH LOVE

Parents with more than one child in the Long Beach schools and teachers who
have been around a few years can probably recite City Manager John Laffey's
DARE graduation speech right along with him by now.

Laffey says proudly that he is a fixture at these functions, one per year
for each elementary school in the district. While he's only been city
manager for a few weeks - 25 days as of Tuesday, he pointed out - he hit
almost all the graduations when he was police commissioner and assistant
commissioner, he said.

Laffey's speech is roughly the same each time because the lesson doesn't
change. Tuesday morning, students at East School got to hear it. "Who knows
who Jonas Salk was?" Laffey asked a sea of blank 10-year-old faces. Amid
the silence, he turned to their parents, who made up the audience in the
gymnasium.

"He invented the polio vaccine," one parent called out.

In old films, Laffey said, you could see scores of youngsters from his
generation lined up for their polio shots, hoping to stave off the scourge
of the mid-20th century. Salk put an end to the fear of the disease that
killed millions, that crippled President Franklin Roosevelt, that ruined so
many lives.

"These kids won't get polio, or rubella, or measles," he said. "How many
diseases have we knocked out with vaccines? But there is no vaccine for
drug abuse. The closest thing we have is parents."

DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, was founded in Los Angeles in
1983 and has become a fixture in elementary schools across the country. It
was dreamed up by former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates, an old friend of Laffey's
from when the city manager was a chief with the New York Police Department.
Two years ago, at Laffey's invitation, Gates spoke to the Lindell School
graduates.

DARE is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teach
children from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure
and live productive drug- and violence-free lives.

School board Trustee Pat Gallagher told the graduates that his college-aged
daughter had been among the district's first DARE graduates. "She got to
understand the police department as a source of positive energy which she
could draw upon," Gallagher said.

In Long Beach, that energy comes from DARE Officer James Larson. "The key
to this program is when I see 11th and 12th graders around town and can ask
how they're doing," Larson, in his dress blues, told the graduates Tuesday
morning. "I get to see how they're progressing with their lives."

All the speakers at this year's East School DARE graduation mined the same
theme: We can keep kids in one piece from 9 to 3. The rest of their lives,
the speakers stressed, is up to their parents.

There were no new-age platitudes to be heard Tuesday. "You are role
models," City Council President Leonard Remo told the parents. "Lead by
example."

"Look at these kids. They have plenty of friends," said Laffey. "You need
to be parents. If you want to be tough, don't yell and scream like our
parents did. Tell them you're disappointed. They want love and approval,
not friends."