DRE

[JS89]

Hello fellow calgunners/leos,

I was wondering how many DREs your department has relative to your sworn number of officers?

I was recently speaking with some traffic officers from San Diego PD and they told me that they currently have less than 4 DREs for their entire department. I know that impairment is often everyones top priority, but I was shocked to hear a department of that size has so few DREs. My department is less than 1/5 the size of SDPD and we have 6 DREs.

[Roddd]

I've never had any issues in court with not being a drug recognition expert. Any City Attorney or District Attorney can prosecute just fine without the arresting officer being a DRE.

[CBR_rider]

Probably about 5% of my the LEO's at my agency are DRE trained. I would guarantee you that one of the reasons San Diego PD doesn't have tons of DRE trained officers is their relatively high turnover rate.

That being said; I am not a DRE because I don't want to. As already mentioned, it's not needed to successfully prosecute well written cases. Further, when an officer is DRE trained the trial often turns into an hours long circus about minor points. Lets see: one hour on the stand to successfully prosecute a DUI or 11550 case or four hours going on and on about my training, types of drugs, blah blah blah. In the end, guess what: its still (except in a few rares cases) a freakin misdemeanor!

[JS89]

I'm not talking about doing a DRE eval for an 11550 unless you need certs. As far as drug deuces are concerned, they're definitely a good tool to have. I've seen numerous officers try to do evals for drug deuces and it's pretty entertaining. I understand that a lot of people don't want to become DREs because of all the training required, not to mention the bi-annual updates but it's definitely worth it. It's also unfortunate that quite a few officers don't even have SFST or ARIDE.

[RedVines]

In my agency of about 1700 sworn we have 10 DREs

[ls2monaro]

I'm a dre with my department and the only thing it has done is guarantee overtime at dui checkpoints and they constantly give me trainees so I can teach them the basics.

All my dui and 11550 investigations I audio and video record the contact and eval. 100+ arrests and never have gone to trial.

The biggest advantage is I can detain most people while most officers get stuck on a consensual encounter because they miss some of the clues/observations...

[HP911]

I'm ARIDE trained, however I have yet to do a drug duece.

I was genuinely surprised to find that out CHP officers are not DRE trained right out of the academy. My ARIDE class of about 30 had about 20 CHP officers, some of which had quite a few years in and still had never done a drug duece.

[CBR_rider]

The biggest advantage is I can detain most people while most officers get stuck on a consensual encounter because they miss some of the clues/observations...

That and the cool, specialized knowledge that come with being a DRE are the only reasons I want to go through the training. Like I said; I know enough (experience plus FST/ARIDE) to get by when needed but where I work court cases as a DRE just turn into absolute circuses. It's not that our DRE's aren't good (many are very, very good); it's just that the lawyers don't have much else on their cases and want to argue every fine point they can in an attempt to discredit the officer. Again, for me, I'll pass. I have DRE's on my team that I work with every day; if I need a DRE I can get one over ASAP and they will gladly take the case for me. Everyone wins, except for the suspect...

[ls2monaro]

That and the cool, specialized knowledge that come with being a DRE are the only reasons I want to go through the training. Like I said; I know enough (experience plus FST/ARIDE) to get by when needed but where I work court cases as a DRE just turn into absolute circuses. It's not that our DRE's aren't good (many are very, very good); it's just that the lawyers don't have much else on their cases and want to argue every fine point they can in an attempt to discredit the officer. Again, for me, I'll pass. I have DRE's on my team that I work with every day; if I need a DRE I can get one over ASAP and they will gladly take the case for me. Everyone wins, except for the suspect...

Our da's office won't file without a valid blood/breath test. So the hardest part is making sure we collect the sample by the book so it doesn't get thrown out in a suppression motion. With the positive sample and video recorded interview and fsts, it leaves the defense with nothing to go on.

The hardest part is these days everyone has all kinds of drugs onboard. Everyone smokes weed, drinks alcohol, and the popular thing in my area is meth and heroin mixed together. So depending on what, when, and how much they took, the fsts will be all over the place.

[nobody33]

Everyone at SDPD is trained on how to make an 11550 arrest and should be able to do a dry deuce out of phase training. I think DRE is better for agencies like CHP whose mindset is geared towards alcohol DUI offenses and don't deal with tweekers everyday.

[1CavScout]

I was a DRE, and we had probably a half dozen other DRE's just at my station (including two DRE instructors). Once I was certified I found that defense attorneys did not challenge me on the stand much. I was very confident in my evals and the DRE process, so I would welcome any attorney that would have liked to have questioned me. I had a PD start to go down that road once, and she quickly realized she had zero clue what she was talking about and the questions stopped.

We had a guy who was involved in a DUI fatality while under the influence of a narcotic analgesic (probably heroin). He had priors and was looking at substantial prison time. One of our DRE instructors did the eval on him, and then spent two days on the stand. The guy was convicted by a jury and went to prison. That eval was important in that case.

Getting certified and keeping your certification current can be a PITA, but having DRE's available is a good thing IMO. If you stick to the DRE process and go step by step, it is very effective at determining what a person is likely under the influence of (including combos).

The downside to being a DRE was being asked to do evals on arrest that were not mine all the time. If it was a simple 11550 a DRE is not needed.

[CBR_rider]

Forgot to post this in case someone is reading this and doesn't know what a "DRE" is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q8mshNi2-s

[Librarian]

And if one is really interested, this PDF: http://www.maine.gov/dps/bhs/impaire...stu1-10-11.pdf

[1CavScout]

Forgot to post this in case someone is reading this and doesn't know what a "DRE" is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q8mshNi2-s

Funny video.