Post by KC on Jul 30, 2006 17:38:25 GMT -5
July 30, 2006 - Since Boston police started annual drug testing in 1999, 75 officers have failed the tests, and 26 of them flunked a second test and were fired, newly released statistics show.
Acting Police Commissioner Albert Goslin said an additional 20 of the officers who tested positive left the department on their own, which he said is because they could not handle the frequent follow-up checks.
Of the 75 officers, 61 tested positive for cocaine, 14 for marijuana, two for ecstasy, and one for heroin, according to the figures, obtained by the Globe through a public records request. (Some officers had more than one drug in their system).
Some specialists and department observers said they were alarmed by the number of officers testing positive for a ``hard" drug such as cocaine and questioned the department's policy that allows an officer to remain on the force after a positive drug test. An officer is not fired until a second positive test.
``It seems like it's a chronic problem," said Darnell A. Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. ``Here we're trying to deal with the guns and the drugs on the street level, but we have a more strident problem inside the department when we have that many people testing positive for drugs, especially cocaine."
The department's drug testing policy is already under scrutiny, after reports that the alleged ringleader in a corruption case tested positive for cocaine in 1999, yet kept his job under the rules that call only for suspensions and treatment even for positive tests for drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
Unlike Boston, the New York and Los Angeles police departments dismiss officers after a first positive drug test.
Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer who is now a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said he believes the Boston police may have an unusually high number of hard-drug users because of its two-strikes policy. The New York Police Department has a very low drug test failure rate because of its zero tolerance policy, he said.
``Once you establish that people are fired, it does change the complexion," he said. ``If an agency says you can use drugs . . . it stands to reason you're going to have a higher rate of people using drugs."
While 75 Boston officers failed drug tests out of a total force of about 2,000 sworn officers since 1999, at the much larger Los Angeles Police Department, 14 officers have flunked the drug test since March 2000. It employs 9,354 officers, of whom about 3,000 are subjected to random urine tests each year.
A spokeswoman for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said that of the 150,000 federal employees who took random drug tests in 2004, 0.4 percent failed .
Read more at link:
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/07/30/75_officers_failed_city_drug_tests/
Acting Police Commissioner Albert Goslin said an additional 20 of the officers who tested positive left the department on their own, which he said is because they could not handle the frequent follow-up checks.
Of the 75 officers, 61 tested positive for cocaine, 14 for marijuana, two for ecstasy, and one for heroin, according to the figures, obtained by the Globe through a public records request. (Some officers had more than one drug in their system).
Some specialists and department observers said they were alarmed by the number of officers testing positive for a ``hard" drug such as cocaine and questioned the department's policy that allows an officer to remain on the force after a positive drug test. An officer is not fired until a second positive test.
``It seems like it's a chronic problem," said Darnell A. Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. ``Here we're trying to deal with the guns and the drugs on the street level, but we have a more strident problem inside the department when we have that many people testing positive for drugs, especially cocaine."
The department's drug testing policy is already under scrutiny, after reports that the alleged ringleader in a corruption case tested positive for cocaine in 1999, yet kept his job under the rules that call only for suspensions and treatment even for positive tests for drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
Unlike Boston, the New York and Los Angeles police departments dismiss officers after a first positive drug test.
Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer who is now a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said he believes the Boston police may have an unusually high number of hard-drug users because of its two-strikes policy. The New York Police Department has a very low drug test failure rate because of its zero tolerance policy, he said.
``Once you establish that people are fired, it does change the complexion," he said. ``If an agency says you can use drugs . . . it stands to reason you're going to have a higher rate of people using drugs."
While 75 Boston officers failed drug tests out of a total force of about 2,000 sworn officers since 1999, at the much larger Los Angeles Police Department, 14 officers have flunked the drug test since March 2000. It employs 9,354 officers, of whom about 3,000 are subjected to random urine tests each year.
A spokeswoman for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said that of the 150,000 federal employees who took random drug tests in 2004, 0.4 percent failed .
Read more at link:
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/07/30/75_officers_failed_city_drug_tests/
