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http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2002-04-06/news/0204050922_1_cadet-fifer-robert-friedland
Boot Camp Drives Discipline Home
LAUDERHILL — They look like tiny soldiers: 23 children, shoulders squared, eyes forward, standing at attention in Veterans Park -- but their parents say they are little rebels.
They don't do their homework, talk back in class and hang with a bad crowd.
A boot camp-style program run by Lauderhill Police Department's Youth Services Unit may shake these kids straight, their parents hope. For $105 each, their children have entered a new world, one where discipline rules, where each child is known more by a number than a name.
"On your face!" yells Sgt. C.J. Fifer as the kids, Cadets 1 through 23, drop to pushup position on Day 3 of the five-day Police Impact Program.
Officer Pete Weaver is the mastermind behind the program, which the department offered to kids throughout Broward County for the first time this week. Two more are planned this summer.
Unwilling recruits
The kids, ages 9 to 16, are all boys save for one girl. Each has medical clearance to attend.
Latoya Williams, 14, Cadet No. 22, is keeping up with the boys on their morning run, but a straggler is falling behind.
"Barf, why are you walking?" Fifer yells at the boy, who earned his nickname after vomiting his first day in camp.
Instructors lead the cadets through an hour of marching, running and sit-ups. The game of intimidation has put fear in some. Others remain defiant. One slacker is sent inside to stand in the corner.
"You wanna quit?" Fifer booms at a whimpering boy. "You are a soft, weak-minded baby! I can make you better! The only thing you need to do is do what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it!"
"I don't want to quit, sir," the boy answers. But he doesn't want to run, either. Fifer walks him through the field holding his hand. Later, Fifer vows: "I will make him believe in himself by the end of the week."
The boy, Cadet No. 20, a.k.a. Robert Friedland, 12, gets an early release to the showers. He was scared before he came here, and he is still.
The first day, his instructors report, he threatened to call an attorney. Said it wasn't legal to make kids run. He keeps coming back, even though the running makes him vomit. He is here, he says, because his parents care about him.
Robert's dad, Roger Friedland of Lauderhill, has had to call the police to get Robert to go to school. Robert, a seventh-grader at West Pine Middle School in Sunrise, refused to go. Things are different now.
"The first day, he said he wished he could go back in time and change things," Friedland says, "so he didn't have to go through this."
Another Lauderhill parent says she too has noticed a change in her son, Nikolas, 10, a fifth-grader at Village Elementary in Lauderhill. "The first day he came home, he told me he loved me," says Samantha Diaz. "I burst into tears. I had to leave the room. I didn't want him to see."
In class, Nikolas, Cadet No. 14, groans, sore from all the exercise. Fifer leans in close. "How old are you?" he asks the boy. "Ten," the boy answers.
Fifer growls back: "You're not old enough to be sore. I'm 40 years old, and I'm keeping up. What's your problem?"
Real images
On Wednesday, Weaver talks to the kids about gang violence. A member of a countywide gang task force, Weaver asks how many have been asked to join a gang. Four hands go up.
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