Police Commissioner Ramon Mafnas admitted yesterday the existence of drug abuse by some Department of Public Safety personnel and that he is now in the process of addressing this concern.<\/p>\n
In fact, Mafnas said he will be requiring his command staff to march over to the laboratory for random drug testing.<\/p>\n
He said he is not aware of how bad the drug use problem in the department is but knows it exists. <\/p>\n
Mafnas said drug tests were conducted at DPS under the term of former commissioner Santiago Tudela and the \u201cresults were not pleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does exist and I hope to address that particular concern and help these people. I will give them the opportunity for counseling and treatment, especially those who admit to drug use,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As soon as his organizational restructuring at DPS is finalized, Mafnas said he will be issuing a directive to encourage all law enforcement officers, firefighters, and civilian staff to step forward if they are using drugs.<\/p>\n
He wants these personnel to sign a declaration admitting their drug use and agreeing to undergo counseling and treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will then agree to a voluntary drug test at their own expense after treatment and counseling. And then three months down the line, they will be again subjected to a drug test and another one again three months down the line,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
If all drugs tests turn out negative, these employees will be retained; if results come back positive, they will be terminated, Mafnas said.<\/p>\n
Those who refuse to step forward will be subjected to a drug test, as permitted by law or policy without violating the Civil Service Commission\u2019s standards and policies.<\/p>\n
Those whose tests will return positive, Mafnas said, will not be given the opportunity for treatment and counseling, as they will be immediately terminated<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re law enforcement officers. There should be no tolerance on drug abuse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mafnas encouraged all other personnel at DPS and in other departments to think about drug abuse and to assess and evaluate the consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who refuse to cooperate or help us help them, we would terminate them, following [Office of Personnel Management\u2019s] recommendation and Civil Service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mafnas stressed that due process will be applied.<\/p>\n
He said that drug use also happened at the Department of Corrections, but they managed to resolve the problem. \u201cI\u2019m also in the process of addressing this at DPS,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police Commissioner Ramon Mafnas admitted yesterday the existence of drug abuse by some Department of Public Safety personnel and that he is now in the process of addressing this concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}