By Joe Morey
News Editor
The Lac Courte Oreilles Police Department unveiled a brand new D.A.R.E. vehicle on Monday, August 23, to the LCO Tribal Governing Board (TGB), which will represent the new program initiated at LCO by Police Chief Tim DeBrot.
D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and the program will have two LCO Police officers, Susie Taylor and Kayleigh Edley, who recently graduated from D.A.R.E. training, go into the LCO Ojibwe School and educate youth as low kindergarten classes up through elementary levels.
According to Chief DeBrot, the new Dodge Charger vehicle was initially acquired through grant funds to be a new squad car, but he looked it over one day and thought it would make the perfect D.A.R.E. vehicle. He said the grant provides all the extra funds for a squad to be upgraded with necessary equipment and that’s what paid for the D.A.R.E vehicle, but, he noted, LCO Police went above and beyond to fix this one up.
“We started looking up decals to place on the vehicle and we wanted it to be Native, so we had the Thunderbird and the Dream Catcher made. We also had the words Native Pride on the front and back windows,” DeBrot explained.
DeBrot said as they continued looking through decals, they found the handprints and so they had them put on so that the LCO Ojibwe School students could write their names on them with washable markers and they would remain on there until the next class at which time, those students would get to put their names on.
DeBrot added that he made sure the car would be really lit up, so they put a lot of lights on it.
“We’ll be at the school once a week with a class and it used to be that D.A.R.E was only taught to fifth graders but now it’s open to all grades, so we will be there educating them at all age levels,” DeBrot stated. “We’d like to start putting these ideas in their heads at an early age.”
DeBrot said the vehicle and their two officers and some youth will be participating in parades throughout the summers. This year, they plan to be in the Cranberry Fest Parade and the Hayward Homecoming Parade.
DeBrot said he and Reone Gheen did the decals and that Dianah Ton did all the ordering to fix up the vehicle.
Pictured below are LCO Police Chief Tim DeBrot with members of the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Governing Board from L-R) Glenda Barber, Michelle Beaudin, Gary "Little Guy" Clause, Sec-Treasurer Tweed Shuman and Chairman Louis Taylor.
