I have seen various types of weapons in law enforcement used on people under the influence of drugs with little to no effect during the course of my career. I have seen people shot while under the influence of drugs only to continue advancing until they bleed out and succumb to their injuries. In law enforcement, recognizing how drugs effect people is essential to survival. The DRE program, drug recognition expert, is a very useful tool for law enforcement. What is the DRE program? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Let’s begin by defining what the DRE program is.
Recognizing alcohol impairment by police officers is an expertise acknowledged by the court system. As difficult as it is, recognizing drug impairment is much harder and requires a significant amount of extensive training. A program was established by the Los Angeles Police Department around 1970 which tested certain clinical and psychological examinations that officers could incorporate to distinguish between different …show more content…
The drawback to this is that it does not specify the exact type of drug. This can often times be determined through a toxicology test. A toxicology test cannot say for certain that someone was impaired at a specific time but the DRE can testify to the impairment level at the time of contact. Another strength is that the evaluation done by a DRE can assist in determining one or more of the seven drug categories of drugs someone may be under the influence of. The weakness to this is that in order to be able to do the testing, an officer would have to go through the three to five month testing. In conjunction with that, each examination takes approximately 30 to 40 minutes to complete. The testing is very systematic and done the same for each evaluation. Let’s
Recognizing alcohol impairment by police officers is an expertise acknowledged by the court system. As difficult as it is, recognizing drug impairment is much harder and requires a significant amount of extensive training. A program was established by the Los Angeles Police Department around 1970 which tested certain clinical and psychological examinations that officers could incorporate to distinguish between different …show more content…
The drawback to this is that it does not specify the exact type of drug. This can often times be determined through a toxicology test. A toxicology test cannot say for certain that someone was impaired at a specific time but the DRE can testify to the impairment level at the time of contact. Another strength is that the evaluation done by a DRE can assist in determining one or more of the seven drug categories of drugs someone may be under the influence of. The weakness to this is that in order to be able to do the testing, an officer would have to go through the three to five month testing. In conjunction with that, each examination takes approximately 30 to 40 minutes to complete. The testing is very systematic and done the same for each evaluation. Let’s