Date: Fri Aug 13 04:32:49 1999
From: carlos@THERIVER.COM ("Carlos A. Alvarez")
Subject: Now THIS is teaching violence in schools
To: AZRKBA@asu.edu
Excerpted from the DRCNET newsletter about the failed DARE program:
At the close of the ceremony, the children were treated to a special performance by the Florida Highway Patrol Special Tactics Team. The Team rolled out across the stadium's field in an armored personnel carrier. Disembarking from their tank-like vehicle, officers engaged in a "shootout" with a group of "drug dealers." The vignette ended with the officers "shooting" and "killing" the bad guys, to the obvious delight of the cheering children.
And so, having witnessed this clearly successful outcome, in which the police shot and killed -- presumably without a trial -- several drug suspects, these thousands of children became the latest class of DARE graduates.
Such a display would seem to be directly in line with the ethos of DARE's founder, former Los Angeles police chief Daryll Gates, who once remarked that casual drug users "should be taken out and shot." So perhaps we ought not to judge DARE's success by how many of its graduates remain drug free, but rather by the number who, as adults, are content to stand and cheer while the state shoots down their less obedient former classmates.
"Giving power and money to Congress is like giving liquor and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke