FOR TRAINING, POLICE MAY DRINK LIQUOR STATE SEIZED

The state has brewed up a plan to teach police officers about public
drunkenness: Let them drink confiscated alcohol, then study the effects.

In some classes, officers will be expected to get smashed in the line
of duty.

Starting next month, police will be able to tap into the state liquor
agency's cabinet of beer, wine and whiskey seized from smugglers,
after-hours cheat spots and bootleggers.

Police can drive to Columbus and pick up free booze for "law
enforcement training."

Under rules developed for the giveaway, local training should mean
things like practicing field sobriety tests or using machines like
Breathalyzers to measure blood alcohol.

"They'll have a member of the class consume some beverages, maybe
they'll videotape it," said Ed Duvall Jr., deputy director of the
state Department of Public Safety's investigative unit. "It's supposed
to be for training purposes so they can identify an intoxicated
individual. Any legitimate police organization can come to us with a
request and get it."

Tom Doyle, assistant police chief in Eastlake, said the program made
him queasy. He never heard of training police by getting them impaired.

"I can't imagine a situation where we'd avail ourselves of that
opportunity," said Doyle, a 28-year law enforcement veteran. "I could
see where it would be open to abuse. What happens to the alcohol
that's not used up in training? It's supposed to be destroyed. How
will it be destroyed, by passing through someone's kidneys?"

But state officials hope that scenes of actual drunks in a class
setting could benefit both the police and the public.

For example, officers can be taught how to recognize the difference
between a diabetic coma and an alcoholic stupor.

Vern Chenevey, director of the Ohio Police Officers Training Academy
in Columbus, said all new police officers must take a 32-hour course
about alcohol abuse.

"But the idea is not to test one another," he said. "You try to get
volunteers. And you've got to be careful you take them home and be
safe. There are liability issues."

Duvall, a retired Akron detective, said he didn't know exactly how
much alcohol is confiscated by state liquor agents each year, but most
of it is destroyed. Bottles with unbroken seals are resold to liquor
stores.

What's left will be free to any law enforcement agency that files a
written request.

"They are more than welcome to it if they want it," Duvall
said.

State Rep. Robert L. Schuler, a Blue Ash Republican who sponsored the
giveaway measure, said he was trying to find a use for confiscated
liquor.

"Now they just throw it away," Schuler said. 'I thought maybe they
could use it to test the accuracy of the machines. They had to buy
liquor for those tests and this was supposed to save money for the
taxpayers."