DeKalb County Police Department

Strategic Traffic Accident Reduction Team

July 18, 1997

MEMORANDUM FROM SGT. J. R. GARDNER

DeKalb Police STAR Team holds SFST Seminar for judges and prosecutors.

On July 12th 1997, the STAR Team conducted a four-hour seminar in Standardized Field Sobriety Testing at the Training Division in Lithonia. This seminar was attended by judges from the State Office of Administrative Hearings and prosecutors from the DeKalb County Solicitor's Office. Also in attendance were a traffic court judge from the City of Stone Mountain, a state court clerk, and two law students. There were two guest teachers. One was Officer Bill Blodgett of the Gwinnett County Police Department. He was the main lecturer. The other was Sgt. Gordon Fox of the Gwinnett County Police Department. His main duty was "dosing up" the live drinkers.

 

The purpose of the seminar was to teach SFST, especially the horizontal gaze nystagmus. It was stressed that the SFST evaluations are backed by research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Some DUI lawyers have said in open court that SFST is nothing but voodoo. Well, to combat such nonsense, there were six people that were given specific amounts of alcoholic beverages. The STAR Team members did not observe these people until it was time to conduct the SFST's. Using SFST techniques, we were able to correctly arrest the impaired individuals and we pointed out the individuals that were borderline or had no alcohol in their system at all. We did this without the use of an alcosensor. While the STAR Team was nervous about possibly being incorrect, we were confident in our abilities to point out the impaired people using SFST. We were able to show the judges and prosecutors that the STAR Team knows its stuff!

 

This seminar was a great success, not because of the STAR Team's abilities in SFST, but because the attendees learned about the research and clues that we look for. Now when the STAR Team testifies in court about the research and the clues, the judges and prosecutors will know what we are talking about.

 

An important side note was the live drinkers. All of them were in agreement that at the .05 BAC level they felt they were impaired and should not drive. Some remarked that it is scary that individuals actually drive with a higher BAC. I'll have to say I agree.

 

As usual, I have a few folks to thank. Thanks to DeKalb County police management for allowing me to conduct this seminar and allowing me to have live drinkers for the attendees to observe.

Thanks to Bill and Gordon, for putting on a great seminar.

Thanks to my drinkers and non-drinkers. They are Carol and Jimmy Ball, Marcy and Ken Beyersdorf, Donna Smith, Katherine Forkgen, Lisa and Dave Dawson, and Lou McMaster.

 Thanks to DeKalb EMS for making sure my live drinkers weren't going to stroke out on me.

 Thanks to all those that attended and were nice enough to want to learn about SFST.