The DARE Snitches

[Nevilledog]

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/09/dare-history-police-surveillance-schools.html

When 11-year-old Crystal Grendell was called into the counselor’s office at her Searsport, Maine, elementary school in April 1991, she likely did not expect to be asked if her parents used drugs. After thinking it through—and likely following some pressure—Crystal reported that her parents smoked marijuana “once in a while.” The counselor, after pulling Crystal out of class multiple times over the next few days to inquire how she was doing, suggested Crystal go to the police station to tell Sgt. James Gillway, the school’s DARE officer, about her parents’ drug use. Crystal complied, but Gillway was too busy to see her.

The following day, Gillway, along with two other DARE officers, came to the school to interrogate Crystal about her parents’ drug habits. Playing on the trust that DARE officers had worked to facilitate with students through their role as teachers of the DARE curriculum—Crystal later recalled, “For an officer, I thought he was pretty cool”—Gillway told her that if she “cooperated” by informing him about her parents’ drug habits, there would be no consequences. Gillway, Crystal recalled, continued with a hardly veiled threat, telling Crystal that if she did not “cooperate” by snitching on her parents’ use of marijuana, both Crystal and her parents “would be ‘in a lot of trouble.’ ” Gillway concluded with a warning. He told Crystal not to tell her parents about their meeting because “often parents beat their children after the children talk to police.”

After Crystal complied, the officers pushed Crystal for information about her parents’ schedules and the layout of the house, and told her that police would go to her house to look for drugs. That afternoon, the police raided her home, arrested her parents, and took Crystal and her younger sister to a distant relative’s house—having neglected to make plans for the girls following the raid. The incident led to a civil suit against the officers. The court found in favor of Crystal, and the judge admonished the police, stating, “The officer’s coercive extraction of indicting information from an 11-year-old girl about her parents was shocking to the conscience and unworthy of constitutional protection.”

Most Americans have at least a passing awareness of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program. DARE is often ridiculed and parodied as a joke, and described as something that “didn’t work.” Oftentimes, people will laughingly remember smoking pot while wearing their DARE T-shirt. While these parodies are an important form of political critique, I found while researching my forthcoming book on the history of DARE that their lightheartedness obscures an important history of the DARE program that was much more insidious: The program turned unwitting kids like Crystal Grendell into the eyes and ears of the police.

*snip*

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. K&R. ACAB includes DARE.

[iwillalwayswonderwhy]

2. I remember my son, around 11, having a week of D.A.R.E. In school

I asked him if he learned anything important. He said this, “If you inject a mouse with alcohol, it will fall off the table.”

[Delphinus]

3. Wow.

I had NO idea. The kids were kind of turned into brown shirted Nazis.

[JHB]

7. The Stazi as much as the Nazis

The Stazi (Soviet-era East German state police) had an extensive network of snitches, and would use any leverage they could get to expand that list.

Never pass up an opportunity to equate right-wing authoritarian tactics with Warsaw Pact police states. The Right does as much to us for fantasy-level associations.

[NowISeetheLight]

9. Sound of Music

It's like The Sound of Music when one of the Von Trapp kids becomes a Nazi.

[sanatanadharma]

4. The 21st century snitches will be the darlings of the new dare

Daughters* of dolts against rational ethics reporting 'difference'.
*and sons too turning in their best friends for being too happy.

[Pathwalker]

5. The principal ar my son's school called one morning, asking me to come

to his office. Once there, he explained about the DARE people who had spoken to the kids, and that my son had turned in my "drug", which he informed them, I took every day, and that he was very worried about me. He then opened his desk drawer and handed me my bottle of Aleve I had been searching for when he called.

When I got home I checked my pot stash - still there. So glad I didn't smoke it in front of the little snitch.

[gulliver]

6. We've given up way too much in terms of control of our kids.

It's tempting to say all of the non-parent adults in this story should be canned. But that wouldn't solve the problem. Teachers and cops are just on the front lines. So are parents and kids. It seems to me like we're at least starting to understand the contours of where we find ourselves socially and politically now. So, there is hope, imo.

[aocommunalpunch]

8. I had a favorite t-shirt.

It read,”I turned in my parents and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” It also had the DARE logo. I loved that shirt into the ground. ACAB

[albacore]

10. Hey.... school is supposed to be a learning experience.

Crystal learned a LOT in this instance.
She learned not to trust police.
She learned not to trust school.
She learned that running her mouth about family issues could cause a lot of trouble. (family issues that did not affect her health or safety, that is)
Next time, Crystal....

[RobinA]

11. I Was In School

well before DARE, but NOTHING taught me more about not trusting school/authority/government than all the drug nonsense they dished out.

[Duppers]

13. Indeed! 👍

[sir pball]

12. I was #1 in my DARE class in 1991...

…by 1999 I was trying to cook MDMA in the college chemistry lab. That sure says a lot about the program!