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

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

0:00
They had decided that in
0:02
retaliation they were going to take out a cop.
0:05
And they decided that the best target would be a D.A.R.E.
0:08
officer because they're at the
0:10
school, they're by themselves.
0:21
That officer never found out how close she came.
0:26
If you went to school in
0:27
America, you probably sat through D.A.R.E.
0:29
You remember the officer, you remember the T-shirt.
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What you almost certainly don't know is what the program
0:34
teaches now or how little of the original survived.
0:37
The man who runs D.A.R.E. today spent 26 years at the Los
0:41
Angeles police department before he took the job.
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Frank, I was so delighted when Craig
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said that you were going to be joining us.
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I think every one of us have
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seen that D.A.R.E. logo, that D-A-R-E.
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That is one of the best logos, a guy
0:57
having come out of the marketing arena.
1:00
I love your logo, always have the
1:02
T-shirts on the side of a police car.
1:05
You know what it is instantly, but
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here's the thing that I'm excited about today.
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You spent 26 years with LAPD,
1:15
retired as a captain.
1:17
And we were talking about this before we started.
1:21
Daryl Gates in 83 decided to start the D.A.R.E. program.
1:26
Apparently in 84, you became one of
1:29
the first ever D.A.R.E. officers in LA.
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Now you're almost 30 years with D.A.R.E.
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You've spent more time with D.A.R.E.
1:40
Right now you're the president and CEO.
1:43
You've spent more time at D.A.R.E.
1:45
than you did in the police department.
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So there is no person that I know that would be more
1:50
qualified to speak to us about this question that I've had.
1:57
What the hell is going on in our schools today?
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What are the kids thinking?
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What are your officers having to do?
2:05
How do they change the curriculum to
2:08
suit the needs of the current students?
2:11
What's going on in the heads?
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I bet it's different than it was when you started in 1984.
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Much different.
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The curriculum is different.
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The teaching methodologies are different.
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The whole approach is different.
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In 1983,
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the
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curriculum was developed specifically
2:33
to address drug abuse, substance abuse.
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And we transitioned to a curriculum that addresses the good
2:43
decision-making regardless of
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the situation a child might be in.
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I like that.
2:48
We teach a decision-making model
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pretty straightforward and pretty simple.
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Actually it's been adopted by
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a lot of business and schools.
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But it's trying to get that eight-year-old, that
3:00
ten-year-old, or 16-year-old to slow down.
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Think about what you're making your decisions on.
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What's involved, the
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consequences, maybe what your choices are.
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Just slow down.
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Nothing's so important that you can't
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take a couple of seconds to think about.
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Applying decision-making model.
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And we still use
3:25
these substances for the discussion points in a class.
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But the decision-making model that is taught can be
3:32
applied to any situation that might have consequences.
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Not just drugs, anything.
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It's involvement in gang activity, involvement in violence.
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It could be personal safety.
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It could be interpersonal relationships.
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And part of the decision-making model is offering students
3:57
the tools to say, "Hey, I don't want to be involved in
3:59
this," without jeopardizing their personal relationships
4:02
with their peers and friends.
4:05
Right.
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Isn't that a big issue with kids?
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They have at least one eye and one ear on their friends, and
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they don't want to jeopardize that.
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So is it drugs these days, Frank?
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Is it other social issues?
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What's the main thing on the
4:22
mind of the kids in schools today?
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Best that you can tell from talking to your D.A.R.E. officers.
4:28
Yeah, so we went
4:31
through, unfortunately, it's ramping
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down pretty quickly, the vaping issue,
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which was pushed by the tobacco industry.
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It was.
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Before that,
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we went through a few years of increased abuse of
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prescription and over-the-counter medications.
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And we were fortunate to be able to work with some very
5:00
talented partners in developing
5:03
curriculum that was specific to that.
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And a lot of that,
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unfortunately, was promoted by some very
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questionable websites, and providing advice to minors on
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what over-the-counter medications to take,
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what dosage.
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I can't conceive of, personally, drinking
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seven bottles of alcohol and a pint of vodka.
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Some of these websites are actually giving you
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age and body weight.
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Here's the right
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dosage.
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And
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it's just crazy.
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So there's a lot of intentional
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negative influences out there.
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as well as
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what we went through growing up.
6:01
That's a great point.
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Talk about vaping, Frank.
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This has always confused me.
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And I think they try to act like
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vaping is not as bad as cigarettes.
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It's not going to hurt you.
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So why not do it?
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I don't know if they're doing it to get high.
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Is it a substitute for cigarettes or is it a form of, do
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they smoke marijuana in the vape?
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I don't really get it.
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So initially, the manufacturers and distributors pushed it
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as a safe way to enjoy the
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benefits of tobacco without smoking.
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Yeah.
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But quite honestly,
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just the thought of inhaling
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boiling smoke doesn't make any sense if
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you actually think about it.
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But the devices were designed so that illicit substances
6:59
could be substituted for the tobacco products that
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came with the vape over the counter.
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And I don't think it was by accident.
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There's a huge industry behind the legalization movement.
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Most people are familiar with the marijuana industry, but
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quite honestly, it's, I think, it goes beyond that.
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A lot of it is driven by money, but
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some of it's other bad intent as well.
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Well,
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what do the studies tell us about vaping?
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I mean, have any studies proven
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that it's as bad as cigarettes?
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It's going to get you lung cancer.
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You're going to have all kinds
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of health issues later in life.
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But what's the information out there?
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There's no positive association.
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It's all right.
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It's all right.
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The medical profession will cite that there's no medicinal
8:00
protocol that involves the equivalent of vaping medicine because of
8:05
the damage that it does to the soft tissue in your mouth,
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in your throat, in your lungs.
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There's no positive to it.
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So the only positive to it is the
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advertising money that's been poured into it to make a
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seem that it's harmless and beneficial.
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So, you know, is vaping legal at a certain age?
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Do you have to be a certain age to
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vape or to purchase vaping products?
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Not really.
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And they're sold at convenience stores and gas stations.
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We've recently signed on and issued letters individually to
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Congress to try to put age requirements on access to the
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access to the vape, to prohibit the introduction and advertising of the
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substances that are intentionally intended for the use of
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minors with some of the bubblegum flavor.
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It's candy names, soda names.
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You can tell they're not
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intentionally designed to be sold to adults.
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This is
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our next generation of customers that they're trying to
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entice into becoming addicted to their products.
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Wow.
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So Frank, I want to jump in.
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I want to ask you a quick question.
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Then I know Craig is going to ask you
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about how you got into law enforcement.
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We're going to jump into your career, some highlights about
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your career, some exciting
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moments, rewarding moments of your career.
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But before I turn this over to Craig, I want to ask you for
9:53
you, what was more rewarding, 26 years on
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the LAPD or 30 years in D.A.R.E.?
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That is a hard question.
10:02
Yeah.
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Which child do you like the best of your three children?
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So with LAPD, I had the opportunity to work a
10:12
significant number of assignments,
10:13
probably more than the average person, the average cop.
10:17
And when I retired and moved to
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D.A.R.E., it really wasn't retirement.
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It was almost like another transfer to another
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part of the PD.
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Every day I get to work with
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police officers from all around
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the world over the United States.
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And so it's really not, I didn't suffer
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the
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withdrawal that police officers experience
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when they
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leave law enforcement and move on to another career.
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It was just like, it was just like picking up and moving
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from 77th Division to Southwest Division.
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Right.
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I get to work with wonderful cops.
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And it was funny when I started
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with, with D.A.R.E.,
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I'm retired from the LAPD.
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I don't have to work.
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And my attitude's always been
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three, three bad days in a row.
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I'll consider retiring again. 30 years
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later, I haven't had three bad days in a row.
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That's good to hear.
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So Frank, we call this show Heroes Behind the Badge.
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All right.
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And I was so excited to have you as a guest because clearly
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what 56 years of work trying to help young people,
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especially being a mentor, trying to keep kids away from
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drugs, trying to help them make good decisions.
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I'm curious about what motivated you to go down that path.
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It was 1984, I think during your police career in LAPD
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became one of the first D.A.R.E. officers.
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And obviously there was something that, that piqued your
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interest to go down this path that you've done for, you
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know, 30 plus years at D.A.R.E. and a lot more at the LAPD.
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Tell us about that.
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What, what motivated you originally to, to go down this
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path of helping young people stay
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away from drugs and make good decisions?
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So in 84, my involvement with
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D.A.R.E. began, and it was an indirect involvement.
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When Daryl Gates and the superintendent of LA Unified
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School District, Harry Handler, decided to develop and
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implement a prevention education program,
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Chief Gates realized that if he waited for the city
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budgetary process to catch up,
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we'd be even further behind the curve than we were in 1984,
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83.
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The adult and adolescent use of substances
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dramatically increased in the 70s,
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but kind of plateaued around 1980.
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But the trajectory of youth use was still increasing.
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And everybody, everybody recognized that if
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it wasn't stemmed, it was
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going to continue.
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Gates approached Dr.
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Handler was not only open to the idea, they had
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actually tried to implement substance abuse prevention
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education programs in the schools.
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But
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they had found that the students didn't give the classroom
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educators the credibility that was needed to
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support the program, the
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programs that they had implemented.
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So they agreed to kind of switch tables and teach police
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officers how to function in the classroom.
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And there were some expenses involved.
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And the chief decided that we needed somehow to support the
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program. It was implemented in LA, and it was never
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intended to go any place other than LA.
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There would be, there was no marketing program.
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There was no thought that this program was going to be
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taught in an adjoining city, let alone around the world.
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So we formed what was called a Los Angeles Police
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Department Crime Prevention Advisory Council,
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which were
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well intended and well respected
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citizens who wanted to support
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not only the D.A.R.E. program, but a lot of other initiatives
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that the police department was
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involved in that weren't funded by the city.
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Our SWAT team wasn't funded.
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So
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the Crime Prevention Advisory
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Council took to underwrite all of them.
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So
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that was my initial involvement.
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Like most people involved with D.A.R.E., once you're introduced
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to it, it just draws you in. And the kids are fantastic.
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And a lot
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of respects from when I grew up,
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their childhood had been stolen.
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They don't get to experience a lot of things that I thought
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were positive in my childhood.
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It's just those things just don't exist anymore.
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So Frank, let's, Frank, can we jump into that?
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So when you're talking about childhood, these kids'
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childhoods and their experiences, you know, everybody likes
15:40
good stories and rewarding
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stories or, you know, cop war stories.
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Let's talk about some of those.
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What are some of the most memorable stories where you
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personally were involved or through
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D.A.R.E. that saved a kid, changed their lives?
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Maybe it was a punk kid that you influenced and he became a
16:00
cop or he became a doctor or
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something, some of those kind of stories.
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Well, what comes to
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mind is a young student. One of our officers,
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up in Ontario, Canada,
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had a special needs student.
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A student that was non-communicative.
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They had an adult assistant assigned to the student, you
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know, at all times when they're in class.
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The student had not spoken
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all the way through kindergarten through the sixth grade.
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And part of the D.A.R.E. program is completion of an essay.
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And the officers at the end of the course select those
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students with the best essay to be read in front of an
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assembly or in the classroom.
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And in this case, the essay that Harry and Gerrit judged to
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be the best was actually written
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by this child that hadn't spoken
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in their entire six years in school.
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That's kindergarten through sixth grade.
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So they got together with the teacher
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and the assistant for the student.
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And
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the student wanted to read their essay
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and actually did read their essay at the
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assembly of the whole school.
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And this is the first time the
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student had ever spoken in school.
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And it was to read the essay.
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I had an officer in LAPD, Cynthia.
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One day, she just noticed the
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kids were super clingy.
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She couldn't move without students being all on top of her.
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the gang unit in that
17:53
division approached her to tell her that
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there had been an officer-involved shooting.
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A gang member was killed.
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And they had decided that in
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retaliation, they were going to take out a cop.
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And they decided that the best target would be a D.A.R.E.
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officer because they're at the school.
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And the peers of the gang members,
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their siblings, found out about this.
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They were going to put themselves between the officer and
18:23
their older gang member brothers and sisters to protect
18:27
that officer, make sure she didn't get injured.
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So it's just every officer, every D.A.R.E. officer has one of
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those stories for every semester in the classroom.
18:39
Wow.
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I have a question about the curriculum itself.
18:43
I'm a big fan of curriculum, how things are presented.
18:48
And from my research in preparation for this, I think there
18:54
was a way that they used to do
18:56
D.A.R.E. and a way that they now do D.A.R.E.
18:58
Let me tell you what I learned.
19:00
And then you tell me if I'm right or wrong.
19:02
Okay.
19:03
It used to be almost a lecture, like a 50
19:07
minute lecture about the evils of drugs.
19:11
And now ever since you reinvented it,
19:14
I think you call it keepin' it REAL.
19:17
The officer only speaks maybe eight or 10 minutes.
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And then the kids get to participate, they get to role
19:24
play, they get to get involved.
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Did I get that right or wrong?
19:28
Yeah.
19:29
The initial curriculum was 17 lessons.
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And each lesson was 45 minutes to an
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hour, depending on how much time the officer had.
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And like you said, it was an information dump.
19:41
Right.
19:41
The officer got up there and for 45 minutes, they were, as
19:46
somebody said, the sage on the stage.
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I mean, they just talked, talked, talked, talked.
19:51
We went through several iterations of the
19:56
scientific community, the prevention science community
20:00
actually developed, well, it came
20:02
about after the introduction of D.A.R.E.
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The
20:06
Society for Prevention Research was
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founded eight years after D.A.R.E. was founded.
20:13
And so as a prevention science industry is
20:17
catching up, but the results to the
20:20
curriculum weren't what we hoped they would be.
20:23
So we went through a lot of iterations of the curriculum.
20:26
We went through some new curriculums that were developed.
20:30
And then in 2007,
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we went in search of a curriculum that everybody recognized
20:36
and being science and evidence-based.
20:38
And that's the keepin' it REAL curriculum that you
20:41
mentioned developed by researchers at
20:45
Arizona State and Penn State University.
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We partnered with Penn State
20:52
and they licensed the curriculum to us.
20:55
We've since adopted that curriculum
20:59
and the curriculum, as you said,
21:04
and the follow-up really addresses
21:07
decision-making and refusal skills rather than
21:12
teaching kids specifically about the
21:14
negative aspects of certain types of drugs.
21:17
And the officers spend about six,
21:19
seven, eight minutes at the beginning of the class,
21:23
recapping the last week and introducing that topic for this
21:26
week and providing the students some information and then
21:30
the students work in what we call a small cooperative
21:34
learning groups to apply those decision-making skills to
21:39
their actual experiences that they live through every day.
21:43
So it's not the officer coming
21:46
in and saying don't do this, don't do that.
21:47
The students actually get to say,
21:50
"This is what happened to me yesterday.
21:52
This is what I think is going to happen to me this afternoon.
21:56
And the other students can work through the
21:58
decision-making model, or what approach that student may take.
22:03
Wow.
22:04
So they actually get hands-on during that hour-long period.
22:08
It's what, like you said, a 10-week curriculum?
22:14
It's 10 weeks, the core curriculum, but
22:19
we're talking about vaping.
22:22
In the past when
22:25
a new issue arose, the
22:27
original curriculum was 17 weeks long.
22:29
And that's about the number of weeks that
22:31
we're in the traditional school semester.
22:34
So as a new topic came up, the only way you
22:37
could introduce it was take something out.
22:40
And so over the years, the threads
22:43
between the lessons had been destroyed.
22:46
So with the new curriculum, it's 10 lessons and what we've
22:52
created is a system of what we call enhancement lessons.
22:55
So as a new topic comes up like vaping,
22:58
we can actually develop lessons that follow the core
23:03
curriculum that can be introduced as an enhancement lesson.
23:05
The students don't know that they've transitioned from the
23:08
core curriculum into additional lessons.
23:11
And the school and the police department can decide which
23:15
lessons, which enhancement lessons, are
23:17
appropriate for that community.
23:20
For vaping, we work with people
23:22
from Stanford and Kaiser Permanente.
23:25
We have lessons on
23:27
teen mental health and suicide prevention that we worked with
23:30
the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
23:34
So we're able to work with some very talented and special
23:40
people to come up with those
23:41
enhancement lessons. And we see it in a lot of places.
23:43
So I'll read or hear about
23:47
students graduating from their 16-week program.
23:51
And I know, okay, they've not only done the core lessons,
23:54
but they've added six supplemental
23:56
lessons and enhancement lessons in that school.
23:59
What about the
24:00
grade level?
24:02
I mean, do you do you give it to all grades or is it a
24:04
certain grade level that gets it?
24:06
So elementary school, the ideal
24:10
grade level is the exit grade level.
24:12
And so it depends on how the schools are organized.
24:14
Could be fifth or sixth grade.
24:17
Middle school, ideally it's the entry grade level and high
24:21
school, the entry grade level.
24:24
Frank, you talk about teen suicide.
24:27
To me, this is maybe one of the biggest issues that we need
24:31
to be concerned about with young people.
24:34
There seems to be a real increase in teen suicide.
24:37
I don't have all the data, perhaps you do.
24:40
But what is the cause of this increase in teen suicide?
24:44
What's happening in the schools or with young people that's
24:48
creating this very serious problem, this crisis really that
24:52
we're facing and how can we prevent it?
24:55
Yeah, I
24:57
don't know that there's a single answer.
24:59
There's probably as many answers
25:01
as there are incidents.
25:06
I
25:08
don't think it's just awareness.
25:13
The suicides, I think, personally, I think there's more.
25:17
The pressures that the teens experience today are just so
25:23
much different than what I experienced as a teenager.
25:28
There's so much bad
25:33
information on the internet that would convince somebody
25:37
that suicide is an alternative way to solve your problems.
25:42
There's
25:43
so much opportunity for negative
25:46
peer pressure to cause people to
25:51
not only develop suicidal ideations but carry them out.
25:56
I mean, we
26:00
don't offer a suicide prevention course.
26:03
We offer information about suicidal ideations and the
26:08
resources that are available to students.
26:12
And we actually have students
26:17
come to the officer after that class and say that
26:21
they need a referral.
26:24
We have one incident where the student had actually
26:26
planned to commit suicide that day on the school ground.
26:29
We've had a classroom educator in the classroom that's
26:32
after the lesson who approached the officer after the
26:36
lesson and said they needed a referral.
26:39
And this lesson is taught in conjunction with the community
26:43
representatives of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
26:46
So it's just,
26:48
it's real.
26:50
It's an increased reality.
26:53
And it's
26:55
tragic.
26:57
Not only for the student.
26:59
Yeah, I think we've seen some really high profile cases
27:03
around the country lately in regards to that.
27:05
And a lot of it has to do with
27:06
the internet and it has to do with
27:09
foreign actors in other countries that are posing as
27:12
whomever, a young girl or boy, depending on the situation.
27:16
And they're extorting them and exploiting them and doing
27:20
all these things, shaming them to the point where, okay,
27:23
well, we're going to send all this stuff to everybody at
27:26
your school and all your friends and
27:28
your parents and this whole big business.
27:31
And like you mentioned, as a kid, you didn't have that.
27:35
We didn't have that on the internet.
27:38
And so I guess in furtherance of what Craig asked about
27:42
that, is that something that D.A.R.E. delves into now about
27:46
computer safety and how to go about dealing with that?
27:50
Yeah, we deal with online
27:53
safety, personal communication device safety,
27:57
security, not just safety, but security.
28:02
It's
28:03
keeping up with technology.
28:06
Unbelievable.
28:07
I
28:08
I sit on one of the committees at IACP.
28:11
And we had a presentation at the mid-year conference about
28:16
child predators using drones
28:19
to monitor the activity of the target
28:23
while they're
28:25
going back and forth from school or
28:27
while they're at their homes in the backyard.
28:30
and actually spy on them with drones.
28:34
I
28:37
saw a video one day, not too long ago, and literally
28:42
they're telling the kid to kill themselves.
28:45
Yeah,
28:47
telling them you're not worth it.
28:49
You're a piece of whatever it was exactly how to go kill
28:53
yourself and you need to go do it right now.
28:55
I was like, wow, that's unbelievable.
28:58
Okay, it's out there.
29:01
That's the unfortunate part.
29:03
And that's what a lot of kids are looking at.
29:05
It's just...
29:06
You intrigued me with a statement you made a while back,
29:11
which really got
29:13
my attention.
29:14
We teach kids how to make decisions.
29:19
I like that.
29:20
Can you expound on that a little bit?
29:22
Do you give them a framework or a series of questions?
29:27
Or how do you do that?
29:29
So we use the acronym, D-A-R-E,
29:35
to represent four stages of decision making.
29:38
D would be define.
29:39
So define the situation you're in.
29:44
What am I faced with?
29:46
Assess your situation.
29:48
What choices do I have?
29:49
What directions can I take?
29:51
R is
29:54
respond.
29:54
You make a decision.
29:56
And the most important one is E — evaluate.
29:59
After you've made that decision, step back,
30:04
Look around.
30:05
Was it the right decision?
30:07
If not, how am I going to correct course?
30:11
In most situations, it can be corrected.
30:16
Unless
30:19
there's been some kind of a
30:21
criminal act or a death of some type, you
30:25
can correct that action somehow, somewhere.
30:28
And
30:30
blame your D.A.R.E. officers if you need to.
30:33
I think
30:36
that's brilliant.
30:37
I mean,
30:38
I don't know about Craig and Billy.
30:40
I never had any curriculum like that when I was in school.
30:44
How you make decisions can be applied to anything, to
30:48
suicide, to drug use, to gang involvement.
30:51
I mean, go through the list.
30:53
I mean, to me, that sounds like the core essence of D.A.R.E.
30:58
I mean, am I overstating that?
31:00
Not at all.
31:01
And it's
31:04
the decision making model itself, it's pretty
31:06
straightforward, pretty simple, four steps.
31:08
It's been adopted by a lot of
31:10
educational institutions, a lot of industries.
31:13
I noticed the other day, one
31:17
of the
31:19
departments within Virginia, the state of Virginia, has
31:24
published a
31:26
guide for seniors that are transitioning to retirement.
31:30
And they use the D.A.R.E. decision-making model for some of
31:34
the decisions that people make relative to their retirement,
31:38
transition to that retirement.
31:39
So it's not
31:42
exclusive to substance.
31:44
It's
31:46
not exclusive to high-risk situations.
31:48
It could be applied to any aspect of your life.
31:52
But just to get the students to slow down,
31:57
Rarely is there a decision that you
32:00
need to make that you can't work
32:03
through a decision making model.
32:04
Take a couple of minutes, work through it,
32:08
and save yourself a lot of grief.
32:12
Do you see any feedback at all from the kids on that?
32:14
I mean, do they understand how
32:17
critical that is or maybe not yet?
32:19
Or what's your feedback?
32:23
The feedback is positive
32:26
and it's long-lasting.
32:29
I was thinking about this the other day.
32:31
I can remember,
32:35
D.A.R.E. officer, it's a coveted position.
32:37
If you're a full-time D.A.R.E.
32:39
officer, you rarely come to the station.
32:42
You're out in the field all the time.
32:44
And I would see D.A.R.E. officers in April, May
32:49
coming back
32:51
to the
32:53
station, looking through their records.
32:57
They've got a high school
32:58
graduation announcement from a student.
33:00
They're trying to place the student.
33:03
It'll be a student that they had in the fifth grade.
33:09
And
33:10
they remember that officer, what that officer meant to them, and
33:13
want them to participate in their high school graduation.
33:15
Wow.
33:15
I had officers that were invited to weddings.
33:18
I had officers receive
33:20
birth announcements.
33:23
But
33:24
I was standing with,
33:26
and this was probably in...
33:31
After 2000, I was standing at an intersection
33:36
in Los Angeles
33:38
with a former D.A.R.E. officer, Scott Gilliam.
33:40
And this young lady walked across
33:42
the street and she saw Scott in uniform.
33:46
And she asked him if he knew
33:48
her D.A.R.E. officer, Scott Gilliam.
33:51
And she didn't recognize him because he
33:52
was about 30 years older than he had been.
33:56
But she actually remembered his name
33:58
and wanted to know if he knew Scott.
34:02
Maybe.
34:03
Scott.
34:03
Maybe.
34:05
He didn't let on that he was
34:06
Scott, but he said he did know Scott.
34:10
That's great.
34:11
But that's not an uncommon question that I've received.
34:14
I'll be traveling somewhere
34:16
in Alaska, and they'll ask if I know Officer So-and-so.
34:20
And this will be somebody that was in their classroom.
34:25
These are young adults that are asking this.
34:27
It's been 15, 16 years since they had that having changed
34:31
with experience with that model.
34:33
Frank spent 26 years with the Los Angeles
34:35
Police Department and 30 more running D.A.R.E.
34:38
In part two, hear what police work costs the people who do
34:42
it and what a classroom gives back.
34:44
The loss of a fellow officer, it's pretty hard to
34:48
compare that with anything other
34:50
than the loss of a family member.
34:52
And the researcher whose work built up the case that D.A.R.E.
34:55
didn't work and what changed his mind.
34:58
Heroes Behind the Badge is
35:00
produced by Citizens Behind the Badge.
35:02
You can learn more or support the
35:03
work at citizensbehindthebadge.org.
35:06
(Upbeat Music)