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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Dare Requests For Help Surprise City Program’s Officers Appeal For Support While Police Department Plans To Drop Course

A passionate appeal for a “community rally” in support of the DARE program typed on a Spokane Police Department letterhead - recently went out to Spokane schools.

Copies landed in the hands of some students, who marched the letters home to their parents.

“The DARE program is in real danger of being cut unless we as a community rally in support of it,” reads the letter, signed “Your Spokane Police Department DARE officers.”

“We believe that children are the future. Help us continue to teach them well and let them lead the way.”

The problem is: The appeal to maintain the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program runs contrary to the Police Department’s adopted position.

In fact, police administrators are recommending the $550,000-a-year DARE program be dropped June 30 in favor of putting more police on the streets.

The letter surprised some city managers, who frowned on the use of city stationery to promote a cause that runs counter to their efforts to cut spending.

“Officers can’t use city letterheads to advocate a position against the department position,” said City Manager Roger Crum. “That’s not appropriate.

“We have told them to cease and desist.”

Sgt. Mike Prim, Spokane’s DARE administrator, said the letters went to schools a few days before he and his officers learned of the department’s official position late last week.

Unfortunately, some schools and parent-teacher groups distributed the letter this week, Prim said.

He said he and his seven DARE officers drafted the letter after fielding several calls from parents and teachers when the proposed cut was announced.

“We were getting all kinds of inquiries about what was going on, what could we do,” Prim said. “We wrote an open letter that we took to the schools.”

He learned later from Police Chief Terry Mangan about the chief’s “commitment to make the cut,” Prim said.

“The official position of the Police Department was not clear to us until (Nov. 10).”

Once that position was known, Prim said, “we support it.”

Deputy Chief Larry Hersom, returning calls for an absent Mangan, said the letter hasn’t caused “a rift between the DARE officers and the rest of the department.”

The DARE officers weren’t aware of the department’s plans to draft a similar program aimed at keeping kids away from alcohol and drugs, Hersom said.

“The letter was an expression at a point of time when they had limited information,” he said.

Police administrators are working with schools to create a lower-cost program using officers on a less frequent basis, Hersom said. Those officers still would be available for routine calls.

Regardless of the DARE officers’ recent change of heart, the appeal to parents was designed to “create hysteria,” said Councilman Chris Anderson, whose youngest daughter, a first-grader at Woodridge Elementary School, was given a copy.

“Scare tactics, threats of service doomsday and self-serving propaganda are bad enough when generated from outside an organization,” Anderson wrote in a memo to Crum and the council.

“When they come from within the hierarchy, they cross the bounds of acceptability.”

, DataTimes