‘No!’ Is Their Rallying Cry : 6,000 Youths at Meeting Loudly Pledge to Avoid Gangs and Drugs

It was enough to make the veteran police officers wince and plug their ears--6,000 elementary school children screaming with high-pitched, eye-watering intensity: “No, no, no!”

The children were just saying no to drugs at the first “Kids’ Convention” for the national Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. And their enthusiasm was exceeded in decibel level only by their response to the acrobatic performance by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Something like a combination rock concert, school assembly and political convention, the event at the Olympic Auditorium in Downtown Los Angeles brought together students from across the Los Angeles Unified School District and marked 11 years of a drug-resistance program that started in Los Angeles and now reaches 25 million children across the United States and in many foreign countries.

It was a far cry from the dull school assemblies of yesteryear. Giant video screens, fireworks, booming sound systems and Arsenio Hall charmed the rapt MTV generation. And the message of resisting drugs, gangs, guns and kidnapers brought home to the adults in attendance just how hazardous it is to go to school these days.

After the program, Darnell Allen, a sixth-grader at Point Fermin Elementary School in San Pedro, said his parents grew up in a different world. “They had all that happy-happy, joy-joy stuff. They didn’t worry about drugs or violence or nothing,” he said.

Allen said the DARE program helped him resist those who wanted him to join their gang. “They started showing guns and spray cans. They didn’t scare me. They said, ‘You’re a punk.’ I just left.”

Walking away, saying no, even saying no “like a broken record” are some of the techniques the police officers teach in the DARE program.

The convention coincided with the introduction this year of a newly revised curriculum. Lessons formerly taught in junior high are now being taught to fifth- and sixth-graders. Allen said the youngsters who tried to scare him with the guns were 11 and 12.

The convention presented a 15-point “Students Bill of Rights” based on suggestions from across the country. “Children have the right not to go to school with criminals” was the suggestion from Chicago. From Los Angeles: “Children have the right to know guns and other weapons will never reach the hands of a child; to know one child will never be killed by another child.”

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The things children have to face can still shock even the police officers who deal regularly with the youngsters.

“I thought I was tough,” said Glenn Levant, executive director of the worldwide DARE program and former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. “But the stories we hear from kids makes you cry. . . . Kids fall asleep in class because the gunfire keeps them up all night.”

In Los Angeles, DARE has been hit by the tighter police budget. Only 52 officers are assigned full time to the program today, compared to nearly 100 three years ago. DARE programs have been suspended in high schools and many junior high schools.

Several studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the program, although others have found it beneficial.

Rebecca Savarese was presented onstage as living proof that DARE training works. Last January, she escaped from a would-be abductor in her Massachusetts town using techniques learned through DARE. Because of her actions, the man has been arrested and charged with the kidnaping and murder of another child.