SPOTTING DRUG USE; Police Trained to Test Drivers

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 6, 1992

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | B01

In a program hailed as a new weapon against drugged drivers, state and local law enforcement officials Tuesday dedicated a center where suspected impaired drivers will be tested. They also recognized 40 police officers who have completed training as the state’s first drug recognition experts.

The Drug Recognition Enforcement program takes the guesswork out of prosecuting motorists suspected of using drugs, said Paul Brickfield, first assistant Bergen County prosecutor.

Instead of relying mainly on a police officer’s description of a motorist’s conduct, prosecutors will be able to use the results of a set of tests administered soon after a driver is stopped.

The officers 20 from the state police, 10 from the Bergen County Police Department, and 10 from municipal police departments have been trained to recognize and measure symptoms induced by various types of drugs, Brickfield said at the dedication.

The testing center is located in a wing donated by Bergen Pines County Hospital in Paramus.
John Pescatore, director of the Bergen County Office of Highway Safety, said the program plugs a gap that exists in the prosecution of drunken and drug-impaired drivers.

“Take the Bergen County Police Department,” Pescatore said. “They make over 200 drunk-driving arrests each year, well over 300 arrests of people driving with narcotics in their car, but fewer than 10 arrests of those under the influence of drugs.

The Drug Recognition Enforcement Program was developed in Los Angeles and is now used in 20 states, including New York, Brickfield said.

The state Highway Traffic Safety Division, working with a $14,000 seed grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, chose Bergen County as the place to test the program because of its almost 3,000 miles of interstate, state, county, and municipal roadways.

The training included classroom examinations and practical experience working with drug suspects and identifying what types of drugs they were using, Brickfield said. The officers worked with suspects arrested on sweeps by narcotics bureaus in Jersey City and Paterson.

An examination of a suspect should take about 45 minutes, said state police Sgt. Frank R. Emig, who, along with Bergen County Police Sgt. Robert Brenzel, is a coordinator of the program. Some tests, such as the balance, walk and turn, one-leg stand, and finger-to-nose, are similar to the roadside tests administered to suspected drunken drivers.

Others, such as examinations of pupils, measurement of pulse rate, blood pressure, and body temperature, and toxicological tests, are scientific tests designed to determine which category of drugs a person may be using, Emig said. By the time a test is concluded, the officer would be able to testify as an expert in court on the category of drugs the suspect was using at the time of the arrest, he said.

About 18 people have been charged since DRE officers began issuing summonses to people for driving under the influence of drugs in January, Brickfield said. A few suspects pleaded guilty while several cases are pending, he said.

No one has been convicted in a contested case, however. Brickfield said the first case was lost last week when a Bergen County Superior Court judge questioned not the credibility of the drug recognition expert, but the initial stop that led to the suspect’s being charged.

He added that the program also would have to survive a judicial challenge of a conviction in New Jersey, as it has in other states, before it is accepted as an established enforcement mechanism.

James A. Arena, director of the state Highway Traffic Safety Division, said it was a natural evolution from drunken driving enforcement to trying to get drugged drivers off the road. In 1981, he said, 33 percent of fatal accidents in the state involved a drunken driver or victim, compared with 18.7 percent in 1991. The national average for 1991, the latest figure available, was 39 percent, he said.

“Consistent with the scourge of drugs in our schools, workplace, the whole society, really,” he said, the percentage of drug-related fatal accidents and injuries has increased alarmingly, to as high as 30 percent in 1991.

Caption: 2 COLOR PHOTOS – The testing center includes a holding cell, top. 2 – Above, Sgt. Frank Emig watching Jennifer Dalton, a public information assistant, in a simulated driver test. – PETER MONSEES / THE RECORD 1

BOY, 15, DIES AFTER SNIFFING BUTANE IN CAR ELMWOOD PARK YOUTH PASSED OUT AT MALL

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, June 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A01

A 15-year-old Elmwood Park boy died Tuesday about an hour after he passed out while sniffing butane gas in the back seat of a friend’s car in Paramus, authorities said Wednesday.
Thomas Prokap was pronounced dead at 10:46 p.m. at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals at Saddle Brook, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said.
A spokeswoman for the Bergen County Medical Examiner’s Office said an autopsy Wednesday failed to determine the cause of death. Toxicology tests, which usually take six to eight weeks, will be performed, she said.
Prokap was in the friend’s car at Garden State Plaza with three friends, whom Fahy declined to identify because they are juveniles. The prosecutor said they began “hanging out” in the mall’s parking lot about 7:45 p.m.
Sometime after 9 p.m., they drove to a store on Main Street in Hackensack, where Prokap bought a 2 1/2-ounce canister of Ronson butane fuel, Fahy said.
The other youths told authorities that, as they had seen Prokap do on occasion within the past week, he inhaled butane from the spray top on the canister, Fahy said.
They said they noticed he was drooling and appeared to be sleeping. When they couldn’t wake him, they drove to the hospital, he said.
The youths were not drinking and there was no evidence of drugs in the car, Paramus Police Chief Joseph Delaney said. Police do not anticipate charging the youths with any crime at this point, he said.
The investigation points pending the medical examiner’s toxicology tests to the butane, Delaney said.
Elmwood Park Police Chief Byron Morgan II said that he has heard of teenagers using inhalants to “achieve a high,” but he knew of no other cases in which a local youth had used butane.
“Any accident like this is a tragedy, a little more so when it involves the life of a child or a teenager,” he said.
Dr. Joseph Boyle, an associate professor of physiology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark, said butane causes excitement, exhilaration, and delirium when inhaled. He also said it could act as a depressant.
“They get intoxicated, similar to alcohol,” he said of users.
Butane also causes a condition known as hypoxia, a depletion of oxygen in the body tissue to a point where it cannot sustain life, he said. And it does not take inhalation of a large quantity of the gas for it to occur, he added.
Boyle said another effect of butane, a volatile organic substance, is an irregular heartbeat.
Residents in the tight-knit Elmwood Park neighborhood where Prokap lived spoke highly of his family, whose other two sons attend Rutgers University, and of Prokap, whom they described as a tall, lean, “good-looking” boy.
“They’re great people. I don’t understand what went wrong,” a neighbor said.
Prokap, who was a sophomore at Elmwood Park Memorial High School who died 22 days short of his 16th birthday, was a former member of the Elmwood Park Little League and St. Leo Boy Scout Troop 80.
Among his survivors are his parents, John and Gloria, and two brothers, John and Gordon, all of Elmwood Park.
Record Staff Writers Jim Consoli and Wendy Zentz contributed to this article.

Keywords: ELMWOOD PARK; PARAMUS; YOUTH; FUEL; ACCIDENT; DEATH; VICTIM; TEST

Caption: PHOTO – PETER MONSEES / THE RECORD – A can of Ronson butane fuel, which carries warning against inhalation.

BROTHER OF JERSEY CITY MAYOR CHARGED WITH DRUNKEN DRIVING

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, March 10, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A05

Thomas W. McCann, acting head of the Hudson County Parks Division and brother of Mayor Gerald McCann, was charged Saturday with drunken driving.
Police said tests revealed that McCann, 38, of 238 Pearsall Ave., had a blood-alcohol level of 0.21 percent, more than twice the level of 0.10 percent at which a driver in New Jersey is presumed to be drunk.
Jersey City police Officer Ed Jennings was dispatched at 7 a.m. to Coles Street and Newark Avenue where a man was reported to be asleep behind the wheel of a stopped vehicle. McCann, police said, was behind the wheel of a white 1988 Dodge Ram, a Hudson County government vehicle.
Jennings, in his report on the arrest, said McCann was “slumped” over the steering wheel and the motor was running. The car was in gear, and McCann had his foot on the brake, Jennings said. Jennings said he and other officers tried to wake McCann up and succeeded after “repeated” attempts.
Neither McCann, who was released on his own recognizance, nor his brother, the mayor, could be reached for comment Saturday.

Keywords: PARK; HUDSON COUNTY; ALCOHOL; ABUSE; TEST; NEW JERSEY; JERSEY CITY; GOVERNMENT; OFFICIAL