Ahhh...."ADAP" class. This brings back memories.

[Pudge]

CLEVELAND - Drinks were on the house in a room at the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department; the tab was picked-up by the law, to help the law pick-up more drunk drivers.

The people drinking were not real drunk drivers, but volunteers, getting tanked in the name of training.

They were maintaining different blood alcohol levels, monitored by a deputy with a breathalyzer, to show that someone who is legally drunk may not seem smashed. "The reason I have them at all different levels so that the officer testing them doesn't know if they are drunk, if they are not drunk, what level they may be at," Deputy Steve Veverka said.

More at link below.






Cuyahoga Sheriff's Dept. Gets Volunteers Drunk for Training - WJW

[Buttercup]

That one guy in the blue shirt looks like he's had more than his share of beer over the years.

[MacLean]

I drank for an SFST class once.

Never again - they provided the cheapest hangover producing booze they could find.

The only thing I could tolerate was some nasty bourbon like substance and I had to mix it with Coke.

By the end of the night they had given me enough to make passing the one leg stand difficult and combined with the caffeine I was awake in a spinning bed for hours.

[Ducky]

And I can volunteer for this... how, exactly? I'd even BMOB. I just think it'd be funny as hell.

[Buttercup]

And I can volunteer for this... how, exactly? I'd even BMOB. I just think it'd be funny as hell.

Actually, how do they find volunteers for that?

[luckyme]

At my academy, the instructors all work for the local college PD. They go ask some of the criminal justice majors to bring some friends and the pick them up in a van.

[jmur5074]

We typically use our police reserves, or have them recruit some friends. Or, sometimes we'll just go look for friends or family members who want to get drunk on the city's dime. Normally willing participants aren't hard to come by.

And just like luckyme, we pick them up in the van.

When I took the class, the van brought all of our drinkers to a bar (at like, 4 in the afternoon), to finish their day. And everyone in the class met them there to play catch up!

[Jks9199]

NHTSA strongly encourages that you do a wet exercise like this when you teach SFSTs. They strongly suggest a pretty strict procedure about handling it, and being kind of selective in who you bring in. How to run one is actually one of the longer blocks of instruction during the SFST Instructor course...

[ms1600]

I've done that before too. It was fun. Each drinker had an officer assigned to them to keep tabs on us throughout the whole wet lab. They even walked us to the bathroom and out to our designated driver. The officer made sure my wife hadn't been drinking when she picked me up.

APD demonstrated the horizontal gaze nystagmus using a camera that projected our eyes on the screen so everyone could see. I had to be told several times to not watch the screen but pay attention to the officer doing the HGN test.

[ms1600]

Actually, how do they find volunteers for that?

I was a member of the APD Citizens Academy Alumni Assoc. I was on an email list asking for volunteers. There was also a paramedic in the class who was a friend of an officer.

[BigDawg]

When I took the class to become Intoxilizer certified we brought our own booze and drank it. We teamed up and one day our partner picked us up and we drank, the next day was their turn. We tested each other through out the course of drinking. This included the SFST's, it was a fun day of school.

[gopherpuckfan]

I did that years ago for Ramsey County. My cousin is a reserve with them and they were looking for volunteers. I drank 6 bottles of Guiness and 2 cans of Bud Light. PBT'd a half hour later at .067

It was a LOT of fun!