Eleven police officers, currently teaching the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program throughout Maine, will head for Virginia Beach, Va., next week for a D.A.R.E. mentor training program.

Dan Frazell of the Bangor Police Department said he hoped eventually to start a New England Regional Training Center for D.A.R.E. so that future instructors would not have to travel to Virginia for training.

The purpose of the D.A.R.E. mentor program is to “teach D.A.R.E. officers to teach other officers to become D.A.R.E. officers.”

The group from Maine will leave for Virginia on Monday, Jan. 28, and return on Saturday, Feb. 2, Frazell said.

“D.A.R.E. officers come and go, and it can be expensive to send them to Virginia. Besides, the training center in Virginia is federally funded and it is not sure that the grant will be renewed. If not, it would be up to each state to provide D.A.R.E. training to its officers,” Frazell said.

The program is for one week.