LAPD Gets $500,000 Grant for School Anti-Drug Program

With hopes of building “a drug-free society within 10 or 15 years,” Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates on Thursday accepted a $500,000 grant from the Weingart Foundation earmarked for a program in which uniformed officers teach elementary schoolchildren how to say no to drugs.

Gates said the check, presented to him by the private foundation’s president, Morris Densmore, would enable DARE--the Drug Abuse Resistance Education project--to assign an additional 10 officers full-time to the program next year.

“I think it is focusing on a very important problem in Los Angeles,” Densmore said. “We think it is a problem with no easy or quick solutions.”

During the last school year, 15 specially trained officers visited more than 100 schools in the Los Angeles area, where they gave a series of 17 lessons on topics such as value clarification, resisting peer pressure and building self-esteem.

The program, which cost the Police Department $750,000 in officers’ salaries last year, has not received specific funds from the City Council. An additional $300,000 has been pledged from other private sources.