By James Mayse
Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
DAVIESS COUNTY, Ky. — Deputies from the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office all recently completed a special certification process that Sheriff Brad Youngman said will help deputies better detect cases of people driving under the influence of drugs.
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Youngman said, in July, the last of the agency’s 26 patrol deputies were certified in Advanced Roadside Impairment Driving Enforcement. The training, which deputies received at different locations across the state over the past year, was funded by additional training dollars from Daviess Fiscal Court.
The training is above what deputies and officers receive during their basic law enforcement training, Youngman said.
“We are all pretty good at determining alcohol” impairment on a traffic stop, Youngman said. The additional training “is a new set of skills (deputies) can go through and determine if they are ready to make an arrest.”
The training will help deputies make informed decisions on drug-impaired driving by observing behaviors and symptoms of impaired drivers. A sheriff’s office press release says the advanced training will help deputies in documenting their cases and preparing for trial.
“DUIs get questioned quite a bit, and those arrests get looked at quite hard by defense attorneys and judges,” Youngman said. “What we are trying to do here is, when people (are) DUI and they get caught, we want to build as strong of a case as we can, like any other crime.”
Fiscal Court “was very gracious to understand and provide the funding” for the additional training, Youngman said.
The sheriff’s office also recently sent one deputy, Corporal Jacob Gould, through a state pilot program to become a Law Enforcement Phlebotomist.
Gould went through phlebotomy training at Kentucky Healthcare Training in Lexington and completed 40 hours of clinical training. At the end of the program, Gould was nationally certified in phlebotomy.
“The state has been looking at this option for two years,” Gould said. The pilot program trained four law enforcement officers to be phlebotomists, Gould said.
The ideal, Gould said, is for the law enforcement phlebotomist to do blood draws to test for alcohol and drugs in cases where a person is charged with driving under the influence. While medical facilities like Owensboro Health have phlebotomists, one might not be immediately available when a suspect is brought to the hospital for a blood draw.
The longer a person waits for a blood draw, the more intoxicants like drugs and alcohol dissipate from their system.
On a recent weekend, “I had two DUI (arrests), and it was an hour for the phlebotomist to come down,” Gould said.
With the training through the pilot program, Gould can draw blood “immediately,” he said.
“In rural counties, they may arrest a guy (for DUI) and it may be an hour to the closest hospital,” Gould said.
The pilot program certified the officers to draw blood outside of a hospital setting, like at a county detention center.
A person generally has to consent to a blood draw, although law enforcement can get a search warrant for blood in certain cases, such as in vehicle crashes that involve a fatality.
Gould, who had medical training before signing on for the pilot program, said being certified to do blood draws is a valuable law enforcement tool.
“I have been in EMS (on the ambulance service) for eight years, and in the Army before,” Gould said. “The pilot program was for someone who was medically trained.”
Of the DUIs law enforcement works, “unfortunately, we are getting pretty close to 50% being (caused by) drugs,” Gould said.
Gould said sending all road deputies to Advanced Roadside Impairment Driving Enforcement training and adding a law enforcement phlebotomist shows the department is serious about drug enforcement.
“I am proud to be a part of this great change here and truly believe this will make a difference, especially in DUI enforcement,” Gould said, “and (we) want the community to know this, just how much work and effort is going into combating these drugs.”
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