A recent YouTube video features Ed Dearborn, executive director of the Orange County Scientology “org”, touting the merits of the organization's Narconon program.
Dearborn says Scientology has been “collaborating with the Santa Ana Police Department on our anti-drug education program, which has been very well accepted by the police departments, particularly Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and a few others.”
]
Readers informed me that the video was pulled from YouTube (hmm), but was immediately posted again by a resourceful, uh, fan of Scientology. Thanks, Redrider425!
Dearborn was inviting folks to an April 3 anti-drug talk held by Tony Harrelson, deputy police chief of the Santa Ana Police Department.
I spoke with Harrelson today, having received questions from readers who wondered if Scientologists had infiltrated the department. He has seen the video, and said folks have contacted him as well, with similar concerns.
Harrelson often speaks to community groups about drug abuse, and said Narconon has “some of the best” anti-drug abuse literature he has seen, but the information he has looked at doesn't have any references to Scientology in it, and he is “not very familiar with them.”
What about a collaboration, as Dearborn puts it?
“It's not like there's any partnership,” Harrelson he said.
So that's that. Oh, and a link to the Stop-Narconon.org website run by David Touretzky, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, a crusader against what he says are the program's unscientific practices.
