An Open Letter To Campbell River Council
Deny the RCMP Request for DARE Funding
Dear Mayor
Jakeway and all Members of Council:
Re: D.A.R.E. program needs funds
Please deny this request. The purpose of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program as run by the RCMP has little or nothing to do with educating youth . That is simply the justification for an extended period of physical interactive contact by police officers with the pre-teen age children of Campbell River. It is intentionally timed as they emerge from elementary school and prepare to enter middle school. There they will become exposed to and contaminated by the anti-cop reality of their next ten years in the teenage world. This is a pre-emptive presentation of a more positive RCMP image before the favorable one cultivated in childhood gets exposed. This is how the intimate contact time with students is designed and works.
D.A.R.E. provides opportunities to establish positive relationships between police, children, parents, teachers and other community members. This is a friendly time between the class and usually a pair of very nice personable young cops in uniform. These individuals have been specifically selected and trained in the cultivation of personal relationships. Their task is creating a bond of trust with each student to not only the instructors but also to the uniform they wear. This is successful in a subliminal establishment and belief that if a police officer asks you a question you should answer because he can be trusted. That is false: the worst instruction a child can be given.
So: Who Is This Guy?
That friendly young Instructor is a Cop. Never doubt it. He’s a complete stranger from someplace else who knew nothing about your community until the day of his arrival, and the community knows nothing about him. He’s not so young: he’s probably a university graduate; he’s completed his basic training, served his street apprenticeship. He’s been with the force about five years and has intensive training in Investigation, Interrogation and has mastered his observation and detailed reporting skills. The majority of the time in contact with students is a time totally devoted to questions and answers about all kinds of topics while he takes notes and leads the questioning.
The instructor not only listens but observes and records minute details that can disclose not only an individual’s history but also his personality and his social relationships in the class. Interrogation training notes body language: facial tics and nervous movements in reaction to pressure. Innocent questions can identify members who are his closest friends, his confidants, and all this is on file.
So What’s The Problem?
If as the instructor requested, a student “Bill” at some point in the future say 6 years later after graduation, Bill gets a call and consents to answer some questions about a “friend” in an interview. All of this information will have been reviewed by the Inquisitor on the other side of the table beforehand. Bill knows that the questions concern his good friend “Jack” but not what they are about. His friend Jack has been caught on camera in the commission of some crime in town XYZ 200 miles away the day before. He was identified and a check on his DARE details revealed a link to Bill as a close buddy
The Interview Process
In the course of the interview Bill is asked Jack’s whereabouts and honestly answers he didn’t know where he was. He volunteers Jack was going to XYZ to collect some money he was owed: he also admits he knew that for a week because he had been pressuring Jack for payment of a debt. To the interrogator that moves Bill into a Person of Interest category because he has knowledge connected in some way to their investigation. The crime may have been planned in advance considering the time frame. Considering the motive was money for Bill that also raises the possibility of a conspiracy and Bill now gets advanced into the Suspect category. Woe is him because he is now a target and the inteerogator presumes him guilty. All future relations with the Cops are on the basis of their attempting to bully him into incriminating himself into an admission of his presumed guilt.
How Can This Happen?
The sad part of this story is that Bill had never been informed of his rights as a citizen of Canada. He has the right to refuse to answer any questions on the grounds he might incriminate himself. but despite his completion of his formal Canadian schooling he, as every other student in this country, has never been exposed to any course dealing with their Civil and Charter Rights as citizens and how to protect those rights when they are threatened. Supporting DARE is a contribution to a program that increases the vulnerability of your youth to the misuse of the Law by some authority and a violation of their rights without the knowledge to protest and protect themselves.
If you still can’t understand, or will not accept advice from a nobody, I suggest you pay attention to the following damnations of the program by authorities far more knowledgeable than either you or I will ever be.
40+ years
ago in 1972 the LeDain Commission blasted the criminalization of marijuana by
DARE and recommended the removal of cops from the classroom. The US National
Academy of Sciences, the US Surgeon General and the US General Accounting
Office have all condemned the DARE program as a failure!
Since 1998,
16 years ago, the US Department of Education prohibited schools from using
federal funds on DARE.
12 years
ago the Nolan Reoprt of the 2002 Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal
Drugs concluded that "prevention strategies in schools should not be led
by police services or delivered by police officers" and that “the RCMP
should reconsider its choice of the DARE program that many evaluation studies
have shown to be ineffective;”
I can’t
understand why Council is considering a program that has demonstrated itself to
be nothing but an RCMP Propaganda and Intelligence Exercise.
Council
should be much more interested in creating and funding a program to advise
these same teens in their rights as citizens in the legally bewildering world
they are entering in their transition to adulthood.
In Closing:
I suggest
the council defer to the conclusions reached by my cited experts and refuse
more funding for DARE.
I also
suggest that you recognize the shortfall in our education system and its
failure to teach students properly with regard to their rights. You can render
our youth far more service by pressuring the Province, at some point before
their graduation, to include a compulsory course in the value and purpose of
their Civil and Charter Rights.
While
you’re at it, add an additional request for another compulsory course in Financial
Management. At the current time a High School graduate has had neither training
nor experience with money management beyond spending what he can pry out of Mom
and Dad. They have no idea of how to assess and determine a budget to survive
paycheck to paycheck much less create an investment strategy to prepare for
retirement 40 years in the future.
Our
children need training in both these areas in order to successfully survive in
the complex Legal and Financial jungle they are entering with adult
independence. The world seems heading for a global disaster and almost inevitable
shortages of almost everything that hasn’t already been polluted and rendered
useless. Inflation and old age are inevitable and their rights and money are
basic tools for successful survival in the world ahead: and the next
generations need to know how to use both to their advantage.
On that
note I leave you. Do as you will.
I would be
remiss if I did not advise you that this letter in its entirety is being
published in my blog:
Medical Marijuana with TheSmeeGoanGuy
At
Regards
BlaineBarrett
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