DONOHUE IN CITY TO RECOGNIZE OFFICERS AT DARE CONVENTION

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue heaped praise on DARE officers
from around the state Monday morning, noting their efforts to reach out to
school kids and to be positive role models.

'We don't realize or appreciate what I know is the critical role you're
playing in our schools,' she said at the beginning of the 15th Annual Drug
Abuse Resistance Education Training Conference at the Holiday Inn.
'Whatever we can do before our kids get in trouble is what we should be doing.'

The DARE program places law enforcement officers in schools and is designed
to give students the tools they need to make positive choices, especially
when it comes to drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Students usually enter DARE
when they are in fifth or sixth grade.

The lieutenant governor said that she spoke as a parent first but also as a
former teacher and prosecutor. Donohue harkened back to her days
prosecuting juveniles from the streets of Troy and said that by the time
some teenagers got to her, it was too late.

'Too many of them were already hard-core criminals,' she said.

Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III and Warren County
District Attorney Kate Hogan also spoke at the event. DARE students from
Geyser Road Elementary School in Saratoga Springs and Abraham Wing
Elementary School in Glens Falls treated the crowd of more than 100 to
musical selections like 'We rock, we rule' and 'If I was brave.'

Hogan directly addressed the students, who will be entering middle school
soon. People will ask you to smoke a cigarette, drink alcohol or try pot,
and it won't always be easy to say no, she told them. Hogan reminded them
that their future and their dreams are nobody else's.

'I'm rooting for you,' she said, 'and I can't wait to see you graduate in
about six years.'