Imagine being pulled over because a police officer suspects that you are driving drunk, and the officer pulls out a needle at the traffic stop to determine your blood-alcohol content. Does this sound like an extreme measure? In some states this scene can be a reality.
According to an article in the Sept. 14 issue of The New York Times titled “Police Officers Getting New Tool Against D.W.I.: Syringes,” a select group of police officers in Idaho and Texas have received training which allows them to draw blood at the site of the traffic stop of those accused of driving under the influence.
In Idaho, police are trained under a highly compressed version of the training other phlebotomists receive. Officers practice on each other, learning to draw blood from the elbow crease, forearm and back of the hand. Once they have taken 75 successful blood draws from fellow trainees, their training is considered complete, The Times reported.
After they finish the training, officers will be able to draw blood from any suspected drunken driver who first refuses breathalyzer tests. They are also instructed to use necessary force, including getting help from another officer to pin the suspect down, a phlebotomy instructor at the College of Western Idaho told The Times.
If, after a year or two, the results seem promising, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police officers nationwide to undergo this training, according to The Times.
Should this program catch on nationwide, one could reasonably expect the debate to be especially large here in Wisconsin. Drunken driving is considered a huge problem here, and state media reports in the past year, such as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s “Wasted in Wisconsin” series have brought the issue to the forefront of public debate.
Most recently, the state Assembly unanimously passed a bill that sets tougher standards for repeat offenders, expands treatment programs and imposes stiffer penalties for those convicted of driving while intoxicated.
Currently first-offense drunken driving is legally the same as a traffic ticket, but this new bill makes the first offense a misdemeanor if a child under the age of 16 is in the car. The new bill also will make fourth-offense operating while intoxicated a felony (currently it isn’t a felony until the fifth) It will also expand statewide a pilot drug and alcohol treatment program practiced in Winnebago County that allows judges the option of offering reduced jail time to offenders who successfully complete the program, in addition to other provisions included in the bill.
Funding will be provided through money collected through beer and liquor taxes, according to a Sept. 23 article in the Journal Sentinel.
This bill still has to pass the state Senate to become law, and Gov. Jim Doyle has also been quoted saying he supports changes to stiffen drunken driving laws in Wisconsin.
Certainly the issue of drunken driving is a serious one in Wisconsin. The Department of Transportation reports that more than 26 percent of Wisconsin adults surveyed admitted to driving while under the influence in the previous year. Additionally, there were also more than 42,000 convictions for drunken driving offenses last year. In 2008, alcohol-related crashes killed 234 and injured more than 4,000 people in Wisconsin alone.
Drunken driving is a serious issue, and the lower the number of alcohol-related crashes, injuries and deaths, the better; few will dispute that. But is it really necessary for police officers to carry syringes?
The law already allows for blood testing of those suspected of operating while intoxicated. The Times article states that the Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that the police could forcibly order blood tests on a suspected drunken-driver without a warrant, as long as they were based on a reasonable suspicion that the suspect was intoxicated, the suspect had been arrested, and the tests were carried out in a medically approved manner.
However, this testing should be done in a medical facility. Hospitals and clinics have safeguards in place to ensure that the blood is drawn in a sanitary manner, properly stored and unlikely to be mixed up.
The police will most likely have their own set of safeguards in place to prevent mix-ups: yet in the back of a police car, it is more likely that preservative levels in the tubes used to collect the blood may be skewed or the blood could be stored improperly, causing it to ferment and have a higher alcohol content, The Times pointed out.
Another problem with this scenario is hygiene. The nature of the job alone makes it nearly impossible to ensure police cars can be kept sterile at all times. When needles are used to puncture skin, and the person holding the needle comes in contact with blood, keeping a sterile environment is crucial. Should someone accused of a D.U.I. contract a disease or infections during one of these stops, the liabilities for the police department are huge.
And both of these situations assume the police officers involved are acting ethically. With few witnesses at most traffic stops, there is also the potential for that one rogue officer to tamper with the blood evidence collected.
While few dispute the need to reduce drunken driving, allowing officers to carry syringes to take blood samples during traffic stops is the wrong way to go about it. The possibilities for error through mix-ups or skewed readings are just too high. The difficulty in keeping a sterile environment in a police car also opens up the door for many potential lawsuits. There has to be a better way.
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