WHEN THE POLICE SUSPECT EACH OTHER, DRUG TESTING INEVITABLE

Once again, we're putting a little more faith in the output of a machine
and a little less faith in each other as human beings. The news this week
is that the New Bedford Police Union has become the first in the
commonwealth to approve of random drug and alcohol testing as a condition
of employment.

If alcohol problems show up, they will be suspended and put in a treatment
program; second offense, a longer suspension; third offense and they're
out. For illegal drugs, there is no second chance. Dismissal is immediate.

There was a certain inevitability about this, even though it wasn't an
issue that got much, if any, public attention during the course of the
negotiations. The talk mainly centered on pay raises (which will be 13
percent over four years).

But the drug and alcohol issue popped up in last year's Bratton Report, in
which a fifth of the officers in the internal department survey suspected
that others on the force were either using illicit drugs or taking money
from drug dealers. With that sort of a cloud hanging over the department,
it is not surprising that so many of the officers shrugged their shoulders
when asked for a reaction this week. If there's such widespread suspicion,
went the reasoning, then the quickest way to dispel it is with a testing
program that will leave no doubts in anyone's mind.

With alcohol and drug testing becoming more commonplace among public safety
workers everywhere in this country, perhaps it is just a matter of time
that union contracts will gradually reflect the new reality.

At the same time, though, it marks another passage, a step away from a time
in which the integrity of a police officer was unquestioned, and a step
toward a time when testing -- of almost anyone, at any time -- becomes an
accepted norm. When Westport High prom-goers must breathe into machines,
when dogs sniff school lockers looking for drugs, when searches of
ourselves and our property by police and employers become ever more
pervasive, we gradually admit that as long as there's a mechanical device,
we will employ it to keep everyone in line.

And gradually, we will forget what it ever meant to say that "character is
what you do when nobody is looking." Because character will no longer matter.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski