Drug testing the police: some results of urinalysis and hair analysis in a major US metropolitan police force.
This article presents the results of drug screening done between 1985 and 1999 by a police department in a major eastern American city. Drug testing data is presented for civilians applying for the position of police officer in response to public solicitations, officers-in-training who are tested at the end of a two year training period, and "sworn" -- i.e., working officers in the field. The data includes test results for both urinalysis and hair analysis. The article compares the outcome in relationship to the intrinsic differences in time windows that the two testing technologies address, and assesses the efficacy of the technologies for detection of drug use, and the differences in detection rates attributable to each. The urinalysis findings show that of the three categories (police applicants, in-training officers, and working officers) applicants have drug-positive urinalyses about 2.8 times the rate of working police officers and at 16 times the rate for probationary officers. This pattern apparently holds true regardless of the size of the tested pool of personnel. Probationary officers in every case have the lowest rates of positive urine test results, applicants have the highest, and working officers occupy the middle ground. Hair analysis, which examines a larger time "window" than urinalysis, shows a higher prevalence rate than does urinalysis. The mean rate for hair analysis drug positive specimens was found to be 1.36 times that for urinalysis. Consistent with the urinalysis results, the applicant pool tested at rates 2-3 times higher when using hair analysis than the probationary officers.
Mieczkowski
Tom
T
Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Avenue SOC 107, Tampa, FL 33620, USA. mieczkow@chuma1.cas.usf.edu
D006197:Hair / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D016495:Police; D015813:Substance Abuse Detection / Q000379:methods*; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000652:urine*; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population