Many jobs these days require random drug testing: If you want to drive a bus in Santa Barbara County, get ready for random drug tests. If you drive a limousine, a taxi, or an ambulance, you’ll be tested over the length of your driving career. And while the Santa Maria Joint Unified School District doesn’t test its athletes, if you want to play in any sport up the road in the Templeton School district? Random drug screening awaits you. But there is one job that practically guarantees you probably never have to pee in a cup: police officer.
Though they carry weapons and have the power of life and death in many situations, none of the police officers or sheriff’s deputies in Santa Barbara County—with the exception of sheriff custody deputies who transport prisoners from jail to court—routinely get screened. All of the law-enforcement agencies have an initial drug screening for hiring, but officers usually aren’t tested for the rest of their careers. Only after what police authorities term a “major incident,” such as a shooting or squad-car accident, are officers screened for drugs.
Though initial screening for drugs is commonplace in California, random drug testing is rare for most professions. California law only permits random drug testing for positions critical to public safety or the protection of life, property, or national security. Santa Barbara County departments go against the current trend in law enforcement toward drug testing: More departments nationally are randomly testing their officers for drugs. Beginning with large departments more than a decade ago, police have been imposing stricter random testing.
The Los Angeles Police Department tests officers on a regular basis, a policy that outgoing Chief William Bratton said is a vital step to ensuring the public trust. Boston police began testing in 1999 and the city was shocked to discover more than 75 officers tested positive for drugs, mostly cocaine, during the first six years of testing. The New York Police Department has conducted random drug tests since 1989.
The Sun was able to confirm that no peace officer agencies in Santa Barbara County subject their officers to random drug testing.
Santa Maria Assistant City Manager Rick Hayden noted that while SMPD doesn’t have a policy of random drug testing in place, the consequences of drug use by a police officer act as a strong deterrent.
“[Drug abuse is] something they would not engage in because they know the ramifications,” he said. “If they were caught engaged in any kind of illicit behavior, that would be career ending—not only with Santa Maria Police, but with any other police agency as well.”
In fact, the only city employees subject to random testing are those in the Department of Transportation areas that carry a class A or B license as mandated by the state, Hayden noted.
Lompoc Police Press Information Office Sgt. Danny Rios confirmed that his department doesn’t test either, but referred questions regarding the policy to the Lompoc City HR department, which hadn’t returned calls by press time.
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s spokesman Drew Sugars was able to confirm that Sheriff’s deputies—with the exception of those involved in transporting prisoners to and from jail—aren’t subject to random drug testing.
Looking northward, San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rob Bryn said he believes the department reserves the right to give a drug test to personnel if there’s an issue with an officer that would involve internal affairs.
San Luis Obispo Chief of Police Deborah Linden said it would be difficult to have a policy in this county for random drug testing. She said there are privacy concerns for the officers, and any policy of random tests would have to be negotiated with the police labor unions for approval.
Dale Strobridge, president of the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, said random testing of police officers is “unreasonable,” and that the subject has never been discussed while he’s been with the union.
“Simply because someone becomes a police officer doesn’t mean they have to give up their constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure,” Strobridge said.
Any police department that doesn’t randomly test for drugs is asking for trouble, said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York Police Department officer and professor of police studies at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“If a department isn’t drug testing in this day and age, they are taking a big risk,” he said. “You are essentially keeping your fingers crossed that nothing will happen, and then you will eventually be hit with an officer-involved drug bust, and that leads to big problems.”
He said many smaller departments never make a conscious decision not to do drug testing, they simply assume that they don’t have a problem. That’s when, O’Donnell said, they can be blindsided by a scandal.
He said his former employer, the NYPD, was racked with drug scandals for years until random testing of 20 percent of the force was imposed. Now the police department is relatively clear of drug use, and corruption is also on the wane.
Police officers often bristle when the subject of drug testing comes up, O’Donnell said, because they feel their integrity is being questioned.
The public, however, can see the line drawn in the sand as a double standard, especially when school-bus drivers and truck drivers have to get the random tests and many police officers don’t, O’Donnell said.
Random drug screening is unlikely to come to Santa Barbara County anytime soon, according to the officials the Sun interviewed for this article. All of the officials said drugs aren’t a problem in their departments.
Robert A. McDonald is a staff writer at New Times, the Sun’s sister paper in San Luis Obispo. Contact him at rmcdonald@newtimesslo.com. Sun Staff Writer Nicholas Walter contributed to this story.
This article appears in Nov 5-12, 2009.