The Tigard Police Cadillac Escalade DARE mobile! Complete with spinning rims!

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Yeaaahhhhh! I spotted it last Friday night at the Beaver’s game (which seemed fitting to attend in the middle of the controversy over their new stadium) and it turns out the DARE mobile is exactly what it looks like – a confiscated drug dealer’s ride. “It was owned by a significant supplier in the Washington County area,” explains Jim Wolf of the Tigard Police. “The school age children just gravitate toward it.”

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

9 replies on “Hey Kids! What’s Cooler than Drugs?”

  1. Does this not have the almost obvious effect of glorifying drug-use?

    I would think driving around a mobile-prison would have slightly more of an impact…

  2. The war on drugs is one of the biggest scams in US history. Only 3% of the prision population in the 70’s was there for drugs vs 20% today.

    Law enforcement is an industry. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. The sooner everyone realizes this, the sooner we can get our freedoms back.

  3. It’s amazing that the police are allowed to essentially steal another person’s property. And then they have the gaul to parade it around in public. The tentacles of the War on Drugs negatively impact every facet of our society.

  4. Wasn’t DARE proven not to work? Doesn’t the same percentage of kids that go through DARE end up doin’ da smack as those that don’t go through DARE?

    Confiscated property represents opportunity costs for a community. They could auctioned off the SUV with the proceeds going to buy decent books and computers for schools and libraries.

  5. This is why I love The Mercury. When I saw this picture, I immediately (out loud ) yelled, “Yeaaahhhh!”

    And then I scroll down and you guys thought (or maybe even yelled) the same exact thing!

    Also, that’s got to be the MOST psychedelic anti drug tactic ever.

  6. Scare tactics about illegal drug use directed at children have repeated proven to not work. DARE is a well-known example.

    Youth Illicit Drug Use Prevention: DARE Long-Term Evaluations and Federal Efforts to Identify Effective Programs, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03172r.pdf

    Typically those with great responsibilities and little real power, seeking solutions, are bamboozled by unethical marketers with heroic fantasies and predicted outcomes which disperse like smoke with an outside impartial measurement of success.

    Provincial right-wing authoritarians are particularly susceptible to this con. Laughing at them doesn’t persuade them to alter their strategy. Instead, ask them about how members of their own family have struggled with addiction, and how they personally stay clean and sober (if they do). RWAs often have good self-care strategies, such as exercise, strong family relationships, the notion of abstinence, and AA / NA. Refocus on these.

  8. So big-ass gas-guzzling SUVs are cool, especially if decorated tackily. Thanks Tigard Police for teaching the children!

    What a shitty car. Anyone seen driving that is a douche. Even if they’re not a cop or a drug-dealer.

  9. I don’t know, seeing how a drug dealer would spend my money, (by buying a tacky, (even before the police painted it,) $60k car,) makes me much less interested in doing drugs. What I think is worse is Realtors that drive things like that, it just screams, “I’m charging you too much.” (When you actually meet them they complain about the other Realtors that will sell houses for 2%.)

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