NJ’s D.A.R.E. Program being Revived

Several years after New Jersey stopped following the national curriculum for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the D.A.R.E. program will again be taught in schools starting in the fall. 

Scott Gilliam, Director of training for D.A.R.E. America, said federal approval of arbitration in March cleared the way for the national program to begin re-establishing a training center in the Garden State and an organization to oversee it.

21 New Jersey officers statewide recently graduated from a two-week, 80 hour training course, on how to teach D.A.R.E. to students.

"We teach them all kinds of things from classroom management to how to facilitate lessons," said Gilliam. "I think D.A.R.E. probably is the only organization that requires two week training so that we can be assured that the officers that go into the classroom are quality officers." He pointed out officers who do not exhibit the specific skills needed to deliver the program accurately do not graduate from D.A.R.E. training.

Gilliam was one of the founders of the D.A.R.E. program in 1983 in California, while working as an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.

"I've been doing it for 31 years now and we've always said, if we could just capture that community relationship between the officers, the kids, the parents, there would be no question that D.A.R.E was effective," said Gilliam. "There's not an officer out there that hasn't had that special relationship, or those kids who have better relationships with their local police departments because of what that officer has done in those ten weeks when they were in the classroom. We know the effectiveness. In fact, we know that there have been tests that show in some cities that when the D.A.R.E. program is in place, crime drops among youth," he added.

Until a funding source is set up for the community-based policing program in New Jersey, D.A.R.E America is financing the cost of the training and providing student workbooks for the first year to all of the officers who have graduated, according to Gilliam.