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DARE officers descend on Dalton
Chattanooga Times Free Press  - July 2008

DALTON, Ga. -- The parking lot was sprinkled with brightly painted police cars, some sporting a DARE mascot lion to go along with their jazzy paint schemes.

At the pavilion more than 100 DARE officers chowed down on steak and potatoes and listened to the bluegrass stylings of the band Old Mill Road.

That was the scene Wednesday evening at Heritage Point Park where DARE. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers from across Georgia took a break on the second day of their three-day state conference.

During the day the officers met at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center to train and talk about improving the program that focuses on students before they enter high school.

DARE is a 10-week program that police officers teach to students in the year before they enter middle school. It focuses on preventing drug and alcohol use, bullying, gang involvement and other destructive behaviors.

Whitfield County Sgt. Darlene Roberts, one of four DARE officers in Whitfield County, said the program is making an impact on young minds before students step into the middle and high school arenas, where there is more peer pressure and increased exposure to alcohol and drug use.

"It's a real successful program," Sgt. Roberts said. "Students learn to support their fellow students and do the right thing."

The deaths of two Catoosa County students earlier this year due to an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers has focused a light on prescription drug abuse among teens.

Whitfield County Sheriff Scott Chitwood said prescription drug abuse is on the rise, but alcohol still remains the most abused drug among students.

"We have 12 schools, and more than 1,200 students per year go through the (D.A.R.E.) program," Sheriff Chitwood said, "so we've touched over 21,000 kids."

Whitfield County's D.A.R.E. program started in 1987, he said.

Mike Shaver, a D.A.R.E. instructor and school resource officer in Hinesville, Ga., said today's students are more prone to getting into trouble and using drugs, in large part because of the violence of video games, TV and explicit and violent music lyrics.

"We didn't have the attitudes that these kids have," he said. "They're more likely to hang around the wrong crowd, and it's like they're not made to be responsible or accountable. The law, parents and the schools are what makes the whole story a success in having a positive influence on a child."

Officer Shaver, like Jim Griffin, a police sergeant in Lowndes County and president of Georgia's D.A.R.E. program, has seen that the program can point young people in a better direction.

"I have parents coming up to me that talk about how they wished they'd had the program when they were kids. 'Then I wouldn't have been in and out of jail all my life,'" Sgt. Griffin recalled them saying.

He said he's always running into students that he taught who are now firemen, doctors or nurses, and they thank him for the influence he and the program had on their lives.

"It's phenomenal, the bond that forms between officers and the kids in class," he said. "You're like a second father to them."

Tammy West, a Murray County D.A.R.E. officer, said she's part of the effort for a big reason.

"I just love kids," she said. "You're not going to be able to save them all, but if I can save one or two, then I've done my job."

The state D.A.R.E. conference ended Thursday with a finale banquet aboard the Southern Belle riverboat in Chattanooga.

In addition to training, officers staged a parade from Walnut Avenue in Dalton to Fort Mountain State Park in Murray County, and staged a D.A.R.E. car show at Market Street outlets here.

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