ness” for central nervous system depressants; “grinding teeth” for stimulants; and “debris in mouth” and “increased appetite” for cannabis, among many others. After the tests are complete, a DRE then renders an opinion as to which drug category a subject’s impairment falls. The DRE’s opinion is intended to help corroborate the arresting officer’s decision to charge the subject with driving while impaired. “It’s kind of like icing on the cake,” Amuimuia said. “You have a cake and you know it’s pretty good, but wouldn’t it be better with icing?” “We actually teach that part of it, that not everybody you’re going to evaluate is going to be impaired, that there are medical conditions that do mimic drug use,” Thomas said.
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ARKANSAS TIMES
_________________________________ The DRE program was developed by the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1970s to help aid in the arrests of subjects were who impaired, but not by alcohol. “Officers were getting a lot of DWI arrests where the BAC was really low or nonexistent, but they knew the person was impaired,” Amuimuia said. “So they figured it was drugs, but they didn’t have a way of figuring that out or proving that.”
police department’s use of DREs, as well as the number of officers within the department who become DREs, depends on the resources and priorities of the department. “Are we putting all of our eggs in the basket of working DWIs? Or are we putting our eggs in the basket [of] working violent crimes?” Thomas said. “Little Rock has a very high violent crime rate, and that seems to take more precedence than getting guys certified as DREs.” A department’s funding can also affect how many officers it sends to receive DRE training, as costs for travel and lodging for the duration of the training can mount. Too, when officers are sent to receive training, that means fewer people on patrol or in the office at their home departments. The first thing DRE candidates do is “preschool,” Amuimuia said, to learn the seven drug categories and undergo tests to ensure they’re “proficient” in field sobriety tests. Amuimuia said the drug categories in the DRE program differ from those of the American Medical Association and the Drug Enforcement Administration, because the drug categories the AMA and DEA use are “based mostly on chemical structure,” while the DRE program categorizes drugs “based on the impairment they produce.” “The definition of a drug is different because, for example, a doctor thinks aspirin is a drug,
“We actually teach that ... not everybody you’re going to evaluate is going to be impaired, that there are medical conditions that do mimic drug use.” Amuimuia said the LAPD worked alongside psychologists and medical doctors to develop the program. In the early ’80s, the LAPD partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make the DRE program “standardized” throughout the U.S., and Amuimuia said it then expanded nationwide toward the end of the decade. The first DRE school hosted at the UA Criminal Justice Institute took place in March and April 1995. Amuimuia said 543 officers have gone through the program since then; 137 officers are now certified in the state, and nine others are candidates for certification. The International Association of Chiefs of Police is the accrediting organization for the program. In the document Amuimuia submitted to the IACP for its 2018 annual report, she wrote that 257 “enforcement evaluations” were performed Jan. 1-Dec. 31 in Arkansas, and 71 “training evaluations” were performed — these are evaluations performed by DRE candidates during their training, often on volunteers or persons already in police custody who agree to have an evaluation performed by a DRE candidate. Of those combined 333 evaluations, 129 of the “opinions” rendered by DREs cited central nervous system depressants as the drug category in which the impairment fell; 66 of the opinions cited cannabis as the drug category. Bill Sadler, a public information officer for the Arkansas State Police, said 17 state troopers are up to date on their DRE certifications. (Officers must update their certification every two years.) Thomas said he “can’t remember the last time” he was called in to perform a DRE evaluation by the LRPD. He said the frequency of a
and it doesn’t impair you — it hopefully fixes your headache,” Amuimuia said. “Whereas somebody huffing spray paint, that will impair you, so that’s one of your inhalants. We consider it a substance that, when taken into the human body, can impair the ability for a person to operate a vehicle safely. So there’s quite a few things on the list that a doctor wouldn’t consider a ‘drug.’ ” After the “preschool,” officers take an entrance exam that they must pass by 80 percent in order to move on to the next phase, an intensive 7-day school. In this phase, candidates learn how to do the 12-step DRE evaluation process, and more about the seven drug categories and their indicators. After the 7-day school, candidates must pass another 100-question exam by at least 80 percent. The officers then move into the “field certification” portion of their training, during which they have three months to complete 12 different “training” DRE evaluations, each of which must be witnessed by DRE instructors. These training evaluations can be completed on persons who’ve been arrested. The DRE program at the Criminal Justice Institute also offers “mandatory evaluation nights,” during which people volunteer to be evaluated. Amuimuia said these volunteers can include community members who take prescription medication and volunteer to be evaluated by a candidate, or arrestees already being held for a DWI who are offered “snacks and a soda” in exchange for agreeing to be evaluated by a trainee. The mandatory evaluation nights allow candidates to complete a few of their 12 required evaluations under the gaze of DRE instructors in one evening, an op-