Steroid testing eyed for police
Other cities to be studied Davis says changes would be negotiated
By Maria Cramer
Globe Staff / March 22, 2008
Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis is thinking of making his officers do something uncommon in big city departments: submit to regular testing for steroids.
As a federal grand jury probes steroid use in the Boston Police Department, Davis has ordered his aides to research the ways other departments around the country test for the drug.
"It really does revolve around the issues of steroids causing aggression in people and the concern around that problem," Davis said in a recent telephone interview. "We would look at other policies around the country to look at best practices. We certainly don't want to write the book from scratch if it's already being written."
However, a Globe survey of nine major departments - including New York, Los Angeles, and the Massachusetts State Police - found that none of them test regularly for steroids.
Instead, those departments follow protocols similar to Boston's. Officers are regularly tested for narcotics such as cocaine and amphetamines. They are only checked for steroids if officials suspect they are using them.
Officials from police departments in other cities say that testing for steroids is too expensive to do regularly. It costs at least $100 to test for anabolic steroids, but only about $25 for a test that determines whether an officer has taken marijuana, opiates, cocaine, amphetamines, or PCP.
Officials say testing for narcotics has historically been a bigger priority for supervisors and citizens, who worry more about the effects of those drugs on a gun-wielding police officer than that of steroids.
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