Pennsylvania's new class of drug recognition experts hopes to make roads safer

Years of responding to deadly crashes along Route 28 spurred O’Hara patrolman Benjamin Wolfson to seek additional training in the hope it might help save lives.

“Almost all of (the deadly crashes) had some type of driving-under-the-influence cause,” Wolfson said, adding that PennDOT statistics show nearly half of all crashes — fatal and nonfatal — can be linked to drugs and alcohol.

“These are all preventable,” Wolfson said.

To help combat the problem, Wolfson said he enrolled in a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration program to become certified as a drug recognition expert. He recently was among the program’s 20th graduating class in Pennsylvania.

The smell of a suspected drunken driver or results from a breathalyzer test conducted during a traffic stop can help officers quickly identify cases where alcohol is impairing a driver. But it’s not as easy when a driver is impaired by drugs. Drug recognition experts are trained to pinpoint signs of impairment by looking for clues in a person’s appearance, behavior and responses to a range of psychophysical tests.

Statewide, only 102 state police troopers and 88 municipal officers are certified as drug recognition experts. There are nearly 23,000 municipal police officers and about 4,000 troopers in Pennsylvania, according to state police and state Department of Community and Economic Development data.

About a half-dozen of the troopers and Apollo police Officer Ronald Bausert are certified drug recognition experts patrolling roads in the Alle-Kiski Valley.

Police can request a drug recognition expert when they pull over a driver who appears to be under the influence but it’s unclear what might be impairing them, according to retired Trooper Craig Amos of the Pennsylvania DUI Association.

Amos said the expert evaluations can save lives because, in addition to possibly identifying drug-related impairment, they can point to a medical condition such as a diabetic incident and an ambulance can be called to get them the treatment they need.

O’Hara officials “felt it was critical” to add a drug recognition expert, according to township Manager Julie Jakubec. The township has 16 full-time officers.

Of particular concern, Wolfson said police are encountering an increase in people using vape cartridges to smoke marijuana derivatives such as the potent THC oils, which endangers the lives of drivers using the drugs and motorists sharing the roads with them.