ARIDE Officers Permitted to Testify as Drug Recognition Experts

Nearly all police officers receive drunk driving detection training in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (SFST), a 24 hour course that trains officers on how to administer 3 standardized field sobriety tests to drivers suspected of alcohol impairment. A select few go on to more intensive training covered by the Drug Evaluation and Classification (DEC) Program to become Drug Recognition Experts (DREs). To become a DRE, where the officer is permitted to testify to an opinion in court regarding drug use and impairment, an officer must complete the following training:

1.  DRE Pre-School (16 hours)
2.  DRE School (56 hours)
3.  DRE Field Certification (Approximately 40-60 hrs)

Becoming a DRE takes months, since the course work is broken up over a period of time, and it takes commitment. While the entire DEC/DRE program is flawed and loaded with nonsense, it is at least in part objective. It is based largely on medical data and information that can be debated and debunked, when necessary. 

SFSTs are typically employed roadside, while an officer trained as a DRE through the DEC program conducts a 12-step evaluation in a controlled environment, such as a police station or jail.

​The Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE) program was developed by NHTSA and the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to "bridge the gap" in training between the SFST battery and the DRE 12 step process by providing officers with an introduction and general knowledge related to drug impairment. It was intended to promote the use of DREs in states that have a DEC Program.

Unlike the DRE certification process, which takes around 130 hours of training time and months of participation, the ARIDE program takes only 16 hours. It is merely an introduction to drugged driving. Essentially, the course gives the police officer student enough information to know when to contact a certified DRE officer to conduct further testing. ARIDE officers are repeatedly warned throughout the course that they are NOT certified as DREs and NOT allowed to offer an opinion regarding drug classification or impairment. Unfortunately, ARIDE also introduces officers to new field sobriety tests that they can employ roadside but should not use in court. The new field sobriety tests lack any sort of validation, and the temptation to use those tests to win a conviction is always present. 

I have warned Michigan defense attorneys that the government might try to use ARIDE officers to convict motorists of driving under the influence of drugs, even though ARIDE officers are explicitly not allowed to offer an opinion regarding drug impairment in court.

In Iowa v Shannon (link below), the court allowed ARIDE officers to convict a motorist without confirmatory blood or urine tests. This is utterly incredible. The Iowa court affirmed expert testimony from the ARIDE officers, even though the officers had only 16 hours of basic training.

In essence, the Iowa court ruled that a 16 hour classroom course renders a police officer an expert in drug impairment. Have you seen the popular Netflix series Stranger Things? If you watched the first two seasons of Stranger Things, you are an expert on the show because it is also 16 hours. 

It gets worse. The DRE protocols were not followed in this case, and this would have rendered the most experienced Drug Recognition Expert’s opinion inadmissible in nearly every court across the country. An experienced DRE's testimony would have been stricken because he or she failed to follow proper protocols, but the ARIDE officers – who received only a small fraction of the training offered to DREs – failed to administer their dumbed-down version of ARIDE correctly, and they were allowed to introduce their evidence with only 16 hours of training under their belts.

The ARIDE officers did not even administer their own ARIDE testing properly. Between two officers, neither one testified to a full ARIDE battery. This is seriously nothing more than Clown College, but the court took it all as gospel. This reveals how readily courts accept so-called "scientific" and "specialized knowledge" whenever it comes from the prosecution's side of the courtroom, even though this is an utter fraud perpetrated upon the court. 

While omitting significant portions of the ARIDE tests, these two officers were allowed to introduce random and arbitrary portions of the DRE 12 Step Process into evidence, even though they were not trained on these tests and lacked even the most rudimentary tools, such as a thermometer to measure body temperature. This is entirely inconsistent with the IACP DEC Program as well as the ARIDE program.

These ARIDE officers may have secured a conviction in this case, but this is a horrible decision that is contrary to well-established law.

State v. Shannon