SUPPORTERS FIGHTING TO KEEP ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM IN PLACE

Terry Chance believes in Davenport's Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or
DARE, program, and he has more than 1,000 signatures and a phone ringing
off the proverbial hook to prove he's not the only one. ."I have had 37
phone calls today from supporters, businesses, moms and dads, everybody,"
said Chance, who had his blue 1993 Ford Explorer specially painted to show
support for the program, which has been recommended for elimination from
next year's city budget as a cost-cutting move.

"It's getting too big for me to handle, honestly," he said Friday.

Davenport Police Chief Mike Bladel has said his decision to cut DARE from
the police department budget stands, pointing out that even though some
private business leaders and the community remain strong in their support
of the program, the depth of that backing cannot shoulder the financial burden.

Supporters plan to show up en masse at a city council meeting this evening
in hope their support can do just that, and one alderman has said he will
search for a way to pull money from other parts of the budget.

Area businesses have displayed "Help save Davenport DARE" on their
marquees, and a "full house" will show up at today's 4:30 p.m. meeting,
supporters said. They set up an information booth outside the Younkers
store at NorthPark Mall to spread the message about saving DARE.

The looming budget battle over continuing the program is a local embodiment
of a nationwide argument over DARE's effectiveness.

The adverse effects of illicit drug use play a role in school failure,
violence and antisocial and self-destructive behavior, and a recent survey
shows that from 1996 through 2002, more than 30 percent of 10th- and
12th-grade students reported using marijuana in the previous year, the U.S.
General Accounting Office, or GAO, told U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, R-Ill.

Durbin asked the independent governmental entity to investigate the
long-term effectiveness of DARE. In January, the agency gave the program a
poor grade.

"In brief, the six long-term evaluations of the DARE elementary school
curriculum that we reviewed found no significant differences in illicit
drug use between students who received DARE in the fifth or sixth grade and
students who did not," the GAO said in a response letter in January. "All
of the evaluations suggested that DARE had no statistically significant
long-term effect on preventing youth illicit drug use.

"Two of these evaluations found that the DARE students showed stronger
negative attitudes about illicit drug use and improved social skills about
illicit drug use about one year after receiving the program."

The GAO looked at two-, five- and 10-year DARE follow-up studies from
Kentucky, three- and six-year follow-up studies from Colorado and a
six-year follow-up study from Chicago.

Local DARE supporters say those studies cannot be compared with Davenport,
pointing to a 6 percent decrease in juvenile crime since the program's
inception here in 1992.

"This is a very valuable program, and when it goes away, the juvenile crime
rate is going to go up," said Mary Bakeris-Gullion, a Davenport DARE Inc.
board member. She points to essays from DARE graduates that express their
desires to always stay in school, avoid drugs and never hang out with gang
members.

Students, teachers and parents are writing letters in support of the
program, she said.

"We've had several parents call and say, 'What can we do, what can we do?'
" she said. "We've had companies call us and say they'd like to give us
cash donations."

"It's those kind of testimonials that people aren't listening to," she said.

Pat Hendrickson, Scott County's juvenile court administrator, said juvenile
crime was "kind of going up" countywide from 1992 to 1999, when there was a
drop. There was a 20 percent increase in drug-related juvenile crime during
2002, she added. .But those trends are shaped more by the economy than the
DARE program, she said.

"When economic times are tough, that's when we see crime go up as well,"
she said. "It's not a program that does any harm," she said of DARE. "I've
never seen it as the answer to our juvenile drug problems.

"Parental influence will always way outweigh anything that a DARE officer
could say," she added. "When you have limited resources, you say to
parents, 'The ball is in your court.' "

Davenport's seventh-grade DARE program was cut due to budgetary reasons in
2001, Bakeris-Gullion said, to which the 2002 increase in drug-related
juvenile crime could be attributed.

"What if the DARE program wasn't in place during those times? You would see
a larger number of crimes during those hard times.

"You can't put any price on that," she said.

Subjective Benefits

Beyond the statistics, supporters such as Chance say the program cannot be
measured in dollars.

His son was 11 years old and involved with a gang and drug activity in an
area with a lot of peer pressure, he said. His son saw people smoking
marijuana and thought it was OK, he said.

DARE taught his son he has the right to say no and the right kind of people
to be around, Chance said.

"These DARE officers are more than just police officers," he said. "They
are teachers, friends, supporters. They're like family to the kids."

In Bettendorf, Police Chief Phil Redington said he met with the school
board this year to look at DARE's changing curriculum and to discuss
questions about its effectiveness.

Bettendorf will continue DARE in the 2003-04 school year, but the police
and school officials will meet every year to see whether there are better
ways of getting out the same anti-drug messages.

"It's hard to determine, if you didn't have a program, what the problems
might be," Redington said, adding that even DARE graduates who get in
trouble appear to be much easier to work with, much more understanding of
the police officer's job.

"If you stop one child from getting involved in drugs from each DARE class,
that adds up," he said. "We feel there's a good possibility that's happening."

Chance said, "DARE gets them comfortable with police and to go to police if
something is wrong, to be a responsible citizen."

Leaving A Gap In Education?

Bladel, who always had supported the DARE program, said it places an annual
burden of about $200,000 on the Davenport Police Department and the city in
terms of both operational and administrative costs. Those funds are needed
in these tough financial times for basic police services.

"We have not just walked away from the schools," he said.

Davenport School District Superintendent Jim Blanche said a part of every
student's day is aimed at life skills and character development programs
that teach such things as common sense, responsibility and teamwork.

"There's going to be a gap from just not having exposure to these positive
role models coming in and just having time set aside to talk about alcohol
and substance abuse," he said. "We support the program. However, we're not
in a position to pick it up (financially)."

The district has not looked into any programs that could replace DARE if it
is cut, he said.

Hendrickson said the county's school-based Juvenile Court Liaison Program
at the middle schools targets those youths who most need intervention and
it has gotten results.

Two-thirds of the youngsters in that program in both Davenport and
Bettendorf have bettered their attendance, grades and behavior.

"The outcomes are very good," she said. "We figured out we get more bang
for our bucks."

Blanche said that program is much more individualized.

"DARE is a broad brush, the other is more focused," he said. "I think the
DARE program is about making good choices, which is not only very
important, that's critical."

"The DARE program has been good for us," he said. "Having police officers
in our school work with our children is a good thing."

DARE Inc. officials said next year's program would be trimmed from 17 to 10
weeks and use one less officer, dropping the city's actual cost from
$120,100 to $37,500. They believe aldermen could find some "fat" in other
parts of the budget to cover that amount.

Alderman Wayne Hean, 5th Ward, said he is searching for a "creative way" to
do just that before the next fiscal year's budget is finalized at a city
council meeting Wednesday night.

[SIDEBAR]

By The Numbers

Here are the numbers of Scott County juvenile crime reports from 1997 to 2002:

1997: 3,195
1998: 3,682
1999: 3,008
2000: 2,747
2001: 2,662
2002: 2,870

Source: Scott County Juvenile Court Service