By David Bailey
MINNEAPOLIS | Mon May 14, 2012 9:45pm EDT
(Reuters) - A Minnesota training program that teaches
police how to identify drug-impaired drivers is under fire following
allegations that a participating officer gave marijuana to a test volunteer.
The allegation, leveled by another officer in the program,
followed reports from anti-Wall Street demonstrators that police plucked Occupy
Minneapolis members from a plaza in downtown Minneapolis for the training, gave
them marijuana and watched them use drugs.
Minnesota has launched criminal and internal public safety
investigations into the single allegation and suspended the program, in which
officers use citizens off the street as test subjects. There are similar
programs in 48 states.
Authorities have not directly connected the Occupy
allegations to the investigation, but have said officers identified test
subjects at the plaza where Occupy has been meeting as well as other locations.
Forest Olivier, an Occupy protester, testified at a
Minneapolis City Council committee hearing on May 2 that he went with police to
a training site voluntarily several times.
"They gave me a full bag of weed and they gave me a
pipe to smoke it out of," Olivier told the hearing.
A 35-minute video produced by Minnesota independent media
groups, including Twin Cities IndyMedia and Occupy Minneapolis, and released
this month showed uniformed officers picking up and dropping off young adults
from the plaza in marked squad cars.
Occupy demonstrators interviewed on the video, including
Olivier, said they were given drugs and then observed by dozens of officers. No
officers are shown offering people drugs.
In one exchange, a protester tells an officer that other
police had given him drugs, and the officer responds that he was only looking
for people who are already impaired.
Minnesota public safety spokesman Bruce Gordon said:
"If additional information becomes available we will widen the scope of
the investigation."
Public Safety Commissioner Mona Dohman suspended the program
on May 9 "pending the outcome of these investigations and until we revisit
and review the curriculum of the program."
The program trains officers to act as drug recognition
evaluators through classes and a dozen evaluations using volunteers from the
community.
The investigation was launched after an officer who
participated in the training reported witnessing a Hutchinson, Minnesota,
police officer give marijuana to a potential test subject. Hutchinson Police
Chief Dan Hatten said on Monday that the officer remains on scheduled duty.