NO DRUGS ON THE BEAT

Any recovering drug addict with long-time sobriety will tell you the first
year of recovery was a nightmare. Most will concede that their brains were
like scrambled eggs until well after that first year. And the urge to
return to drugs didn't even begin to abate until the first anniversary was
reached. That's why the Denver Police Department shouldn't be operating
under Civil Service Commission rules that allow hiring cops who used drugs
one year earlier.

The Colorado State Patrol and Boulder and Colorado Springs police forces
all require five years of clean time from hard drugs -- and three years
from marijuana, the most innocuous of illegal drugs. Englewood won't look
at anyone who has used drugs within the past five years.

Granted, Denver needs more cops than smaller cities do. But it also needs
high-quality officers who can handle the stress of urban crime. These
officers face more murders, gang activities, drug smuggling and domestic
violence than smaller cities do. These officers need to be sharp, without
any cobwebs clogging their brains.

The Civil Service Commission policy is particularly lax when applied to
those with long histories of drug abuse -- and those who used huge
quantities of hard drugs.

Consider Ellis "Max" Johnson II. His long history of heavy drug use
reportedly ended in 1987. He admitted to using drugs, including LSD and
crack cocaine, more than 150 times. He also said he had shoved his ex-wife
and a girlfriend and had stolen from two former employers.

Johnson flunked police background checks six times and scored poorly on a
psychological exam for Denver. He applied 32 times to 21 departments
without getting a job. Denver officials refused to hire him repeatedly --
until this fall, when he was chosen for the police academy.

We agree that former drug addicts and alcoholics who have successfully
undergone rehabilitation fully deserve a second chance at making themselves
useful to society.

But police have citizens' lives in their hands. The public safety depends
on them. Somewhere, strong standards must be set to carefully sift through
those with a propensity toward violence, substance abuse and other criminal
behavior.

The notion that a candidate with one year of sobriety should be issued a
badge and a gun is ludicrous. We urge Denver officials to change this rule
immediately to better conform with stricter standards in place across the
nation.