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Police cadets undergo sobriety test • Training introduces CNMI to state-of-the-art method of determining drunk driver
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Posted on Nov 05 1999
It was a seminar where a number of police trainees were asked to get drunk. After consuming several cans of beer and two bottles of tequilla, they were made to take a breath test, walk on a straight line, count on their fingers and submit to an eye movement test.
With the rising cases of vehicular accidents on the island, the Department of Public Safety has decided to hold a three-day seminar on field sobriety test that will assess neurological impairment.
To assist the department, DPS invited three police officers — Brenda Campbell, Lee Campbell, both from Phoenix, Arizona, and Paul Hill, deputy sheriff of Pima Country, to conduct the training among police officers. While this is the first time that this state-of-the-art sobriety test was introduced in the CNMI, this has been widely used in the U.S. mainland and other parts of Europe.
The seminar , Lee said, will not teach the police officers how to stop a drunk driver because it is something which an untrained person can do.
“What we are looking for are impaired drivers who will go through a stop light, take the risk of coming out of an intersection without observing whether a child is coming out of the block. It will ensure the safety of the community,” he said.
The cadets who volunteered to get drunk gave the police officers the chance to conduct test on people with different levels of alcohol concentration in a classroom setting. “You cannot teach this using a video. Observing these volunteers who got drunk is the best way to do it,” Lee said.
The indicators used will help assess the person’s alcohol level even before taking a breath test, said Lee, who was certified to conduct the test in 1986. For example, the rapid eye movement is one indicator that will help in determining alcohol concentration.
“Once the officers have taken the training, they would know whether they have to arrest the driver or not,” he added. The breath test will substantiate their findings on the alcohol level of people.
The accepted blood alcohol content level in the U.S. mainland and the CNMI is .08, a standard set by the National Highway Transportation Services Association.
DPS will declare December as a Drunk and Drug Driving Prevention Month.
