How DRE Training Saves Lives
ALBUQUERQUE, NM – Village of Milan Police Chief Carl Ustupski is one of three Drug Recognition Experts in Cibola County. His expertise comes with years of experience on life-saving techniques that not only aim to keep the roads safe for drivers, but save his community thousands of dollars in repairs, funeral expenses, or police overtime to investigate serious or even fatal car accidents. The need of a DRE in the community is underscored by their ability to protect residents from harm and save municipalities and counties money in ways most local officials wouldn’t think about.
On April 6 the Cibola Citizen was invited to a statewide DRE training class. Successful students would have the opportunity to show off what they learned in the classroom and ultimately, if they are successful, becomes DREs. The training was held on Wyoming Boulevard in Albuquerque, where one of the trainers was Chief Ustupski from MPD.
A change of pace for Ustupski – who usually sports his MPD equipment and vest – called on him to be dressed in a suit and tie for the event. The training included ten law enforcement agencies from across the state for a total of 16 officers to participate in a three-week block. Chief Ustupski’s role was to help teach these new officers and prepare them for the rigorous tests ahead. Ultimately, Chief Ustupski said his number one priority is preparing the officers in this training to remove dangerous, intoxicated drivers from the road to save lives.
What is a DRE
A Drug Recognition Expert must undergo a rigorous training regimen to ensure they understand their duties and how to properly classify whether a person is intoxicated. A DRE must understand the effects and impacts of different drugs on a person’s ability to drive. With this knowledge, the DRE can assign a classification to the type of drug a driver may be on. Tim McCarson, state DRE Coordinator, said that there are six different categories of drug and alcohol a DRE officer must look for, so that, rather than saying a driver is intoxicated on a specific drug, the officer can broadly classify what drug they are currently intoxicated by and work to alleviate the symptom and prepare them for arrest.
“It’s about saving lives,” McCarson said. “The role of a DRE is very, very specific… we’re not going to go in and classify someone as under the influence of meth, or heroine, or fentanyl, or marijuana – they’re broken down into categories based on the most observable signs and symptoms.”
DREs are required to undergo an intense and rigorous physiology course where they learn to understand what chemicals different drugs are made of and how they impact the user. These officers learn how to do medical checks, eye examinations, and vital sign examinations. DRE officers learn that their job is to make the drug influenced person comfortable, so that they do not over excite them, and explain the reason they are speaking with the person; officers listen to the person, make an evaluation, and ultimately give their opinion which is first and foremost designed to keep the road safe.
Not every judge has a good understanding of the role of a DRE. “The biggest challenge with the DRE program is judges just don’t know what it takes to become a DRE; what the assessment really means; how can the officer make a legitimate opinion after doing this evaluation – that’s the biggest challenge. Most judges are really savvy with the basic field sobriety test for alcohol and they have a general broad understanding that if a person can’t walk on or stand on one foot, they’re probably drunk, but they don’t understand the full assessment,” McCarson said, “Being able to deliver this information to the judges is really important.”
Despite not all judges understanding the role of a DRE, fear of the courtroom is never on a DRE’s mind. Ultimately, their job is to keep the road safe. “I have a completely different philosophy about what happens in court: It doesn’t matter to me, because I can’t control it,” McCarson said, “What matters to me is removing that individual from the road. The way I like to teach and explain it to officers to move them past that frustration they get in court sometimes is, ‘you stopped this individual, so you potentially saved someone’s life, you probably prevented a crash, they were placed into custody.’” McCarson said that people who are arrested for driving while intoxicated are put on pre-trial release, giving them a list of rules that must be followed from the courts. If the individual is wealthy enough to hire a private attorney, then the cost hits that person’s drug or alcohol money. “Now you got into their alcohol budget, or drug budget. Perfect. What happens in court is you present the best case you can, you can’t control a jury’s decision or a judge’s decision. But even if a case gets dismissed on a weird technicality, you still did your job and you still won. Because you ultimately protected how many other citizens from potential crashes, injury, serious injury, or death; and you saved that person’s life too, because they could have potentially killed themselves driving impaired. You’ve saved police departments countless hours of investigative time, especially in a great bodily injury or fatal crash, because you removed this person from the road.”
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