Page 423 - NIXBOOK

While I was our department’s DARE Officer, I also became our
Crime Prevention Officer, which meant I wound up giving a lot
of police station tours to youth groups of all kinds and ages, and
crime prevention presentations to neighborhood watch groups,
homeowners associations, and community and civic groups. I
also did robbery prevention presentations to the local banks at
their early morning meetings. I became adept and comfortable at
public speaking, and I prepared and presented talks for groups of
people in every age range and demographic including crime
prevention talks for civic clubs and presentations to classes of
students in every single grade, from pre-school through
elementary, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college classes, and
police reserve academy courses.

Several times I addressed the entire student bodies at the
elementary school, junior high, or high school during special events in their gyms or auditoriums. And every other year or so
the local fire department would host a simulated car crash scene on the football field so the teens could see a graphic
representation of what a drunk driving crash could look like. We’d get tow truck companies to bring out a couple of wrecked
cars and we’d put some actors in there – teens in formal wear that we splattered fake blood on. It usually included one kid
“dying” and getting carried away under a sheet, and another kid getting “arrested” for drunk driving. Police cars and fire trucks
and ambulances would show up, lights and sirens on. Sometimes we could get a medical airlift helicopter to show up from
Seattle to simulate an emergency transport to Seattle’s Harborview hospital trauma center. Two or three times I narrated the
event with a microphone. The whole thing usually made most of the teachers and adults watching get all emotional and the
whole crowd of 1,500+ kids always watched in respectful silence. I was always nervous about getting heckled because in the
audience I was well aware there were at least a dozen real troublemakers whom I had arrested for various offenses, whom I know
just hated me. But to my relief every time, I had a perfect record of finishing every presentation without ever being interrupted.
Here’s me educating one of the elementary schools:

Because DARE Officers got to drive differently marked police cars it was not too crazy of a request for me to also get a special
red DARE jacket. To make it look official I had a reflective cloth badge sewn onto the front and a large silver “POLICE”
silkscreened on the back, and I added shoulder patches on the sleeves.

I wore it a lot and was quite amused once when it got a fire department lieutenant completely bent out of shape when he saw
me wearing it at the county fair when I was there on official business. He approached me and asked me to please not wear it
because red was a fire department color as everybody knows and police were supposed to wear blue, not ever red. I politely
declined and he then desperately resorted to bribery, offering to pay me cash on the spot so he could get it away from me. I
smiled and said no thank you and he stormed away quite frustrated. That still cracks me up when I think about it.