BANGOR – Police Officer Dan Frazell was awarded the D.A.R.E. America Lifetime Achievement Award at the National D.A.R.E. Officers Association conference held in Las Vegas recently.

Glenn Levant, president of D.A.R.E. America and former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, made the presentation at the annual banquet. Frazell is only the seventh person to receive the award, the highest honor D.A.R.E. America bestows.

A member of the Bangor Police Department, and their community relations officer since 1988, Frazell received the award in recognition of his 15 years with D.A.R.E., at both the local and national level. Frazell was elected president of the National D.A.R.E. Association in 1998.

“Anywhere I can support D.A.R.E.,” he said, “I do. I passionately believe in the program.” He has conducted more than 175 workshops for various groups throughout Maine and has lectured in 25 states.

The 17-week D.A.R.E. education program is aimed at fifth-graders and seeks to impart the lesson that taking drugs is a dangerous choice. But there’s another benefit, as well.

“Every child has a right to a police officer’s time in a nonthreatening way,” Frazell said. The D.A.R.E. program is a way to give children that time, he said.

Frazell said he takes the D.A.R.E. lessons he has learned, and taught, out into the community as a volunteer girls basketball coach at Bangor High School.

Many of the students he coaches, he says, he first met as fifth-graders in the D.A.R.E. program.

Next year D.A.R.E. will implement a new curriculum for elementary and junior high pupils. It will rely less on lectures and more on active participation, role playing and scenarios, Frazell said. He will continue to teach the D.A.R.E. message the at fifth grade level.

“I’ve done it forever,” he said, “and I’m always excited about it. We can only get one kid at a time. There’s no silver bullet. D.A.R.E. builds a foundation, and parents have to build the house.”