I never have understood the whole D.A.R.E. car thing. I can see the point in going, "See? We seized this from a drug dealer. Nyah, nyah, it's ours now!" to kinda rub it in criminals' faces ... but WTF does this mean to anyone else?
Pretty much nothing ... especially when they seem to deliberately go out of their way to make the things look so frickin' hideous and absurd with tacky paint schemes and accessories and such. Who the hell do they really think they're impressing?
FWIW, there's an early 90's Crown Vic rolling around Apache Junction with funky Draglite-style rims (like 10" wide meats in back), some crappy-sounding exhaust (sounds like they just deleted the muffs and ran straight pipes out back), and a huge freakin' scoop on the hood, with some cheesy star-spangled-banner design slathered all over the thing from front to back. WTF is that all about? I didn't look at it up close, but what does THAT car say? "Seized from a fellow police officer?" What a friggin' waste...
IMO, they need to just stop buying police cars and convert every other car or truck they seize from a drug dealer into a patrol car, not just these fancy D.A.R.E. cars they only use in parades and crap. Not only would it save the city/county a buttload of money (I'm sure they seize LOTS of nice cars every year, they could just pick the best ones of the bunch), but they'd be a lot more incognito, because everyone's first instinct when they see a Crown Vic, Impala, or Charger is to think, "Oh crap, that's probably a cop, I'd better slow down" - this would not only help them nab a lot of traffic violators (and thus increase revenue), but also actually serve to be useful for catching REAL criminals committing REAL crimes ... because, let's face it, an unmarked Crown Vic still reeks of "bacon" as much as a fully-marked and light-topped cruiser.