Frank Pegueros — Answering D.A.R.E.'s Critics, and What the Job Costs | Part 2

Part 1 covered what D.A.R.E. teaches now. This half is about the people who teach it, and about the criticism the program has carried for forty years.

Frank Pegueros — retired LAPD captain, President and CEO of D.A.R.E. America — starts with something simple and easy to miss. For most parents, the officer in their child's school is the first police officer they have known as a person rather than as a uniform arriving on the worst day of their life. That officer becomes a known quantity in the community, and Pegueros argues that is the whole mechanism. He describes officers who took the school assignment expecting a soft landing before retirement, and who report seeing a positive reaction to their work for the first time on a daily basis.

Bill Erfurth tells his own story from that world: a burglary case, a set of latent prints, and the discovery that they belonged to the son of one of his first sergeants. What that sergeant said when Bill came to arrest his kid is the part he has never forgotten.

The conversation moves through fentanyl and why Pegueros refuses to call 80,000 overdose deaths a year progress, online bullying and what social media platforms could stop if they chose to, the genuine decline in teenage drinking, and what COVID did to a generation of students. Asked by a reporter to name the most dangerous drug on the streets, his answer is alcohol — the one nobody counts.

It closes with the thing that makes this episode worth recommending. In 2000, D.A.R.E. convened the people attacking it and asked how to build a better program. The first day went badly. By the second, the room had turned. One of those critics, Dr. Dick Clayton — who authored much of the negative research from the 80s and 90s still circulating online — asked to go through the training as a participant rather than an observer. He now sits on D.A.R.E.'s board of directors and chairs its scientific advisory board.

Contains discussion of suicide, including officer suicide, and some strong language. If you're struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 in the US — call or text 988.