Police hold prevention day

Their goggles adjusted, the two Grade 6 children attempted to walk a straight green line, each holding a small ball in their hands, aiming to dump them into baskets at the end of their short marches. One child missed the line completely. His rival made it, but only by moving extremely slowly, balancing herself on the line stuck to the solid floor of the Sarto Desnoyers Community Centre in Dorval as if she were suspended high on a tightrope.

"The goggles make you see the world like you're drunk," explained Station 5 community relations officer Lilana Belucci, as other classmates of the two children looked on.

The booth set up at the community centre in Dorval was just one of 10 that Grade 6 students from both Lester B. Pearson and Marguerite Bourgeoys school boards visited at the centre over the course of the last three days this week in order to learn about the negative effects of drugs, alcohol and tobacco consumption on their lives.

"This is the second year we're doing this," Bellucci said. Based on feedback from their inaugural year last year, the police station spruced things up for the children this year.

"Last year, we (the force) had tried to do a tobacco workshop," she said, adding the children did not seem to be too enthusiastic about it.

So, this year, the police got older children involved in the action, having students from Grades 9 and 11 at Grieves Aventis Academy in Montreal prepare a display of different diagrams demonstrating how badly one's lungs are affected from tobacco.

Judging by the intense looks of concentration on onlookers' faces, it appeared that bid was successful.

Over at another booth, kids got a look at the complex situation paramedics find themselves in when someone has consumed so much alcohol they have passed out and clogged their oesophagus due to involuntary reflex vomiting.

"You can use this type of tube to be able to send air to the victim and pump out the vomit," explained Urgences-Santé officer Jeremy Veilleux, demonstrating by attaching the tube to a dummy victim laid down on a stretcher.

The children also got a taste of drunk driving, thanks to a motor racing video game they got to play with the same alcohol goggles used in the line-walking exercise.

Behind the curtains separating yet another booth from the rest stood a young man dressed in a slick business suit and coat. "Hey you, want some easy money?" Asked the play-actor, rehearsing his lines out loud for his turn as a shady business man offering drugs to students.

Later on, he dressed up as a more ordinary-looking gangster in "street" clothes to try the same thing.

Among some of the volunteers running the show today could be seen members of the Pointe-Claire YMCA, as well as police officers from neighbouring stations. Bellucci said other stations may create their own versions of the prevention day next year.

About $10,000 was spent in total, according to Bellucci, between different partners of the SPVM such as La Senza, El Ran, and caterers Subway, Tim Horton's and Domino's.