Police Expected to Make Case for D.A.R.E. to Rockwood School Board

Some Rockwood area police team leaders planned to attend the tonight's board of education meeting in support of reinstating in the district the nationally known Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, commonly called D.A.R.E.

Patch broke the news about the district's surprising announcement to end the anti-drug education program, and covered various perspectives as the news spread among Rockwood families.

Proponents of D.A.R.E. spoke at the May 19 Rockwood board of education meeting, and left packets of information from other supporters who could not attend the meeting that night.

Eureka Police Chief Mike Wiegand, who was the first to launch the program in St. Louis County with the Rockwood School District in the late 1980s, said he whole-heartedly believes that the program makes huge differences in the lives of Rockwood students.

"D.A.R.E. is community policing, and is universally viewed as an internationally recognized model for community policing," said Wiegand.

He said the U.S. Department of Justice has identified how D.A.R.E. benefits local communities through the following ways:

• D.A.R.E. "humanizes" the police: that is, young people can begin to relate to officers as people
• D.A.R.E. permits students to see officers in a helping role, not just an enforcement role
• D.A.R.E. opens lines of communication between law enforcement and youth
• D.A.R.E. Officers can serve as conduits to provide information beyond drug-related topics
• D.A.R.E. opens dialogue between the school, police, and parents to deal with other issues

Other D.A.R.E. proponents point toward the fact that President Barack Obama declared April 7 to be the national D.A.R.E. Day.