A Salt Lake City business recently made a cash donation to the Salt Lake City Police Association's DARE program.
The problem?
Salt Lake City doesn't have a DARE program.
Now police are warning residents not to fall victim to the same scam.
The incident began Sunday night when the business received a call from a person soliciting cash for Salt Lake's DARE program. The business agreed to make a $25 donation and a person claiming to be a representative of the police union stopped by the store to pick up the money, said Salt Lake City police detective Joe Cyr.
The phony union representative even presented the business with a piece of paper that had a photo copy of a Salt Lake City police badge on it and the word "DARE."
But after the man left, the business owners started having second thoughts about what they had done. That's when they called the police association and learned they had been scammed.
The Utah Council for Crime Prevention does have a DARE program, Cyr said. And the Salt Lake Police Association will occasionally solicit for donations for its shop-with-a-cop program. But the union does not have a cash only policy, he said. It should automatically be a red flag for anyone if they hear that, Cyr said.
Investigators were trying to determine Wednesday if any other businesses had been scammed by making a donation in the name of a DARE program that doesn't exist. Cyr said detectives were looking into reports that a Layton business may have also fallen victim.
DARE — which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education — was pulled in 2000 from Salt Lake public schools in a controversial move by Mayor Rocky Anderson. The program, which remains a staple curriculum in many schools throughout the state, places officers in the classroom to teach kids to abstain from drugs and alcohol.
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