SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY, Calif- In light of the incident with Cory Pierce, the San Luis Obispo Police officer who allegedly bribed, sold and stole drugs. Central Coast News wanted to find out if law enforcement agencies here on the central coast drug tested their employees.
It's not unusual that most central coast law enforcement do not do any kind of drug testing. The San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs do not drug test their employees. In fact, Sheriff Ian Parkinson said he doesn't believe any law enforcement in San Luis Obispo County does. Santa Maria Police and Santa Barbara County Sheriffs don't have a policy in place either. One of the main reasons is it hasn't been a pressing issue.
"Anytime an event like this happens we look for opportunity for positive change," said Chief Steve Gesell of the San Luis Obispo Police Department. At the San Luis Obispo Police Department there hasn't been a policy in place for drug testing officers, but many employees are embracing the idea. "As early as this morning at a staff meeting, I heard that many of our employees where interested in kind of a global policy where all officers would be randomly tested," said Chief Gesell.
Ensuring safeguards won't be that easy, Mike Cordero with the Santa Maria Police Officers Association said there would have to be a system ready to handle for example, false positives. "I don't know what the system would be, but it would have to be something that is an absolute guarantee that it's clean urine," said Cordero.
This same issue came up at the Sheriff's Office a couple months ago, and after the Cory Pierce incident, the Sheriff said its time to make a drug testing policy happen. "I think it's important for everybody I think it's important for the integrity of the agency, everybody wants to be able to show they are above board," said Sheriff Ian Parkinson.
Fortunately for the Sheriff's Office, it has its own lab so the cost would be low, but for other agencies you can expect a chunk of tax money spent on testing. "A lot of that is going to change depending on what kind of a program and the volume you are going to be using but it's always going to be under 50 dollars for that type of a test," said John Pallanes, President of Star Drug Testing.
The Sheriff's Office began talks about changing its policy this morning, and the SLO Police Department has been revising its policies for about a year now and will have a policy in place for drug testing next month.
