SPENDING QUESTIONS ADD TROUBLE FOR D.A.R.E.

State Audit Shows Mismanagement

The officers of Pennsylvania's D.A.R.E. program, already reeling from a
probe into allegations of embezzlement, have been ordered to return more
than $200,000 to the state even as they continued to submit bills for
conferences that included go-cart rides, miniature golf and barbecues.

The Pennsylvania D.A.R.E. Officers Association was forced to return
$204,468 in unspent money to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and
Delinquency after an audit showed widespread mismanagement.

The PCCD audit showed the grant money was not being spent as budgeted, that
many expenditures were undocumented and unspent money was not returned to
the state. Furthermore, the audit showed there was little oversight on how
the money was being spent.

The officers association, which is virtually bankrupt, is disputing some of
the claims. Officials say they were misled by Roy A. Willoughby, PCCD's
former crime prevention manager, who oversaw the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program, one of the nation's most publicized programs to fight
youth drug and alcohol abuse.

Willoughby, a convicted felon, was forced to resign in May 2001 after his
fourth drunken-driving arrest and is the subject of a state grand jury
investigation into alleged misappropriation of funds.

But a review of bills submitted to PCCD by the officers association shows
lavish spending on conferences after Willoughby left.

In September, after its funding was suspended, the association asked the
state commission to pay for two conferences that totaled $45,838.

The July conference, which was held in Williamsport, includes a $13,150
bill from the Oink &Cluck Roasting Service for food for several hundred
people on each of three nights, labeled "Ball Park Night," "Pool Night" and
"Race Track Night" on the bill.

The association also tried to bill the state for $1,306 in go-cart rides
and miniature-golf games and $1,620 for sports shirts for the officers at a
conference that included only two speakers.

The commission turned down the expenses for the go-cart rides and shirts
and only paid the food bills for the 100 authorized attendees, not the 200
and 300 that were on the bills.

Peter J. Beauduy, an Upper Allen Twp. officer who heads the officers
association, said the committee that organized the convention was not
familiar with grant requirements.

"Anytime they do a conference, we try to include a lot of family activities
after hours, and the state only pays for the attendees," he said. "Not
being familiar with that grant process, a bill was submitted for everybody."

The commission is seeking the return of more money from the association and
may order an independent audit of the association's accounts.

Agency Cuts Officers' Grants:

The D.A.R.E. program has become one of the most prominent and controversial
such programs in the country. The program, which puts police officers in
schools to teach pupils about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, is
praised by many law-enforcement and education groups as an effective deterrent.

But last year, the U.S. surgeon general's office and the National Academy
of Sciences issued reports saying the D.A.R.E. program was largely ineffective.

The state commission's study in 1999 showed ninth-graders who are D.A.R.E.
graduates are more likely to have tried marijuana than other ninth-graders.
But that study gave D.A.R.E. an overall positive rating, saying youths
exposed to the program are "significantly" less likely to have tried
inhalants, tranquilizers, cocaine, crack cocaine and smokeless tobacco.

To address those concerns, the D.A.R.E. program is being updated to include
more lessons for older students.

Despite criticism of the program, Pennsylvania has continued increasing its
funding, which topped $4.5 million this year in grants to schools and
police departments. The D.A.R.E. Officers Association was formed to provide
training for the agency's officers and for conferences. The association
received $1.7 million in grants -- separate from the DARE program's state
funding -- between 1996 and 2000.

Funding for the D.A.R.E. program is administered through PCCD.

Commission Executive Director James Thomas said his agency has cut off the
officers association from grants until the criminal investigation is
complete. The money is being distributed through the state Chiefs of Police
Association in the meantime, he said.

"Until the investigation is complete, until we know what the attorney
general has learned, we are not able to have a financial relationship with
the [D.A.R.E. Officers Association]," Thomas said. "We're certainly on the
same team, but we cannot in good conscience further put financial support
into the association until such time as the investigation clears the air."

The commission is holding the association responsible for $45,600 in checks
state investigators claim Willoughby said were for a billboard campaign,
but were written to his dead stepbrother.

Another $1,329 in checks were written to Willoughby's mother, the audit showed.

Those checks are part of the attorney general's investigation into
Willoughby's tenure as head of the D.A.R.E. program, according to a search
warrant for Willoughby's bank records filed last year. The investigation,
which started a year ago, has apparently widened and is before a statewide
grand jury.

One of the convention bills submitted by the officers association after
Willoughby's departure is for a $9,666 convention at the Holiday Inn
Harrisburg-West in Hampden Twp., the owners of which have been questioned
about their relationship with Willoughby in the investigation.

Official's Past Exposed:

The commission requested the probe after an officers association official
called Willoughby's successor and asked where the billboard checks should
be sent.

D.A.R.E. Officers Association treasurer Jack Killian told The Patriot-News
that Willoughby filled out the grant applications, which were signed by the
association's officers. He said Willoughby used the association as a
checking account to distribute the grants. Killian has agreed to resign his
position once the investigation in finished.

Documents obtained by The Patriot-News show Willoughby lied about his
criminal history on Civil Service forms as he was being promoted, even
though he was hired from a state prison halfway house.

Willoughby, 55, was hired in 1971 after serving time in state prison for a
series of burglaries and was claiming no criminal convictions as early as
1977. He filled out the form similarly in 1998 when he was promoted to the
$64,607-a-year management position, eight years after receiving official
reprimands for his second drunken-driving conviction.

D.A.R.E. officers association officials said they were shocked to learn of
Willoughby's criminal background.

Yet Thomas, who has been with the agency since 1970, said everyone knew
when Willoughby was hired in 1971 as a low-level clerk that he was living
in a state prison halfway house.

Thomas said he did not know that Willoughby had been convicted on burglary
and larceny charges from a string of burglaries in Cumberland and York
counties and had been sentenced to a six-year term.

By the time he was promoted to criminal planning manager in 1995,
Willoughby had been reprimanded and suspended for two drunken-driving
convictions in Cumberland County, in 1985 and 1989.

PCCD officials learned of the arrests after they appeared in stories in The
Patriot-News. They were not aware of a 1979 drunken-driving arrest that was
handled through a probationary program for first-time offenders.

According to a letter of reprimand by Thomas, Willoughby later lied to his
supervisors about the status of his license suspensions.

After his second arrest, he was suspended for three days and ordered to
comply with some type of counseling. He was suspended for five days in 1990
for failing to follow the conditions set by the governor's personnel office.

Yet in his application for the management position, which went through the
same office that imposed the suspensions, Willoughby once again said he had
no criminal convictions.

Although the Civil Service form was notarized by Thomas' administrative
assistant, Thomas said he never saw it. He said he assumed Willoughby would
be truthful given his reprimands in the past for not being forthright about
his criminal cases.

Thomas said he recommended Willoughby for the position because of his
exemplary job performance and because Thomas thought his drinking problems
were behind him.

"It seemed to me that he had finally turned a corner and knew the job
inside out and had the respect of the law enforcement community," Thomas
said. "Did it occur to me that this was a major risk? I didn't really think
of what would happen if he regressed. Maybe I should have."

Willoughby was dismissed after his fourth drunken driving arrest on April
13, 2001.

He was arrested at 3:23 a.m. after his car struck a curb outside a Burger
King in Lemoyne and, police said, he repeatedly tried to enter the
restaurant through a back door. The restaurant manager said Willoughby said
he was a police officer, according to arrest documents.

Police said Willoughby's blood-alcohol content was 0.164 percent. Under
state law, a driver is considered drunk at 0.10 percent.

Willoughby pleaded guilty to drunken driving in January and prosecutors
dropped other charges.

Because more than seven years had elapsed since his last drunken-driving
arrest, the new charge counted as a first offense, and he was sentenced to
2 days to 23 months in the county prison.

However, because of his prior felony record, he could have faced a minimum
sentencing range of 1 to 9 months under state sentencing guidelines.