POLICE DEPARTMENT PLANS PROGRAM TO REPLACE DARE

The Kansas City, Kan., Police Department is making plans to introduce a new
program to replace the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, which is
being phased out this year.

Chief Ron Miller said last week that the department intends to apply for a
federal grant that would place school resource officers in Kansas City,
Kan., high schools and middle schools.

Miller said the department would like to maintain its presence in the
schools. School resource officers, he said, would be members of each
school's staff, although they would be employed by the police department.

They would be on hand to teach courses and interact with students. "They're
not there to be uniformed police officers (patrolling the halls)," he said.

Miller said he would discuss the grant on Nov. 7 with officials from the
Kansas City, Kan., Turner and Piper school districts and the Archdiocese of
Kansas City in Kansas. The plan, he said, is for the districts and the
department to apply for the grant together.

Miller said he didn't know how much money the grant would provide or how
long it would last. But he said the goal would be have at least 14 officers
in the program.

One officer would be placed in each high school and one in every other
middle school. DARE placed officers in elementary schools.

"We are transitioning into another level of police officers involved with
the students, the schools and the school districts," Miller said.

In the Kansas City, Kan., School District, officials welcomed the idea.

"I think it's very valuable to have officers in the schools, educating
students about police procedures and improving relationships," spokesman
Carroll Macke said.

The police department decided to eliminate DARE for budgetary and personnel
reasons. Miller said that about 12 officers had been called up to active
military duty since last year's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Those departures, coupled with attrition, had left the department short on
patrol officers. Eliminating DARE, which had cost more than $400,000 a year
and had employed as many as six officers plus a sergeant, allows the
department to apply those resources to patrol and other duties.