| Going beyond "Just say no" |
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| Written by APB staff |
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While Joe Keil, a K-9 unit deputy with the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, was training law enforcement officers to be Drug Recognition Experts, the class ordered Chinese food for dinner. When the delivery driver walked into the room, one thing was evident to the officers within 10 seconds: the driver was high on marijuana, Keil said. “He shows up at a class where there are 30 cops that are going to DRE school, and he has been smoking weed 10 minutes before and driving a car,” Keil said. The DRE program trains law enforcement officers to recognize signs and symptoms during traffic stops that someone may be under the influence of drugs. Since he was DRE certified in 1996, Keil has taught thousands of officers across the United States to recognize drug use. Keil’s experience with the DRE program, and 20 years with the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, led him to write a book: “When Just Say No Doesn’t Work.” The book, released in June of 2008, is a guide to street drugs and recreationally used pharmaceuticals, including language and slang, methods, signs and symptoms of use, and drug-and paraphernalia-related photos to help officers identify related items in the field. As examples: he states that SRH or an Ace of Spades on a clothing or bumper stickers stands for Stoners wReaking Havoc or Supporting Radical Habits. “Seedless” brand clothing company contains hidden stash pockets for weapons, drugs, or cash. “For some people, they will sit there and say ‘not my kid, not my kid,’ and then it is their kid and it is just too late,” he said. “I am just hoping that this book reaches as many households as it can where people will go ‘wow, I didn’t know this’ or ‘now I have found this – what do I do?’” Keil wrote the book after he had looked at other books written by physicians and psychologists. He said the books were hard for people to understand, and covered a lot of chemical issues. “There was nothing out there that showed what to basically look for or the paraphernalia and the stuff that goes along with drug use,” he said. Drug usage is nondiscriminatory; age, race, creed, color, nationalily, sex, social or economic status does not exclude anyone from falling victim to substance abuse. The face of drug use itself is constantly changing. Knowledge is our best tool for drug prevention and recognition, and many officers have used this book as a valuable tool in understanding drug use on the human body. After reading it, Joe Schisel from the Two Rivers Police Department states he now understands why, while conducting a search warrant, he found that the suspect was growing morning glory plants in an aquarium: morning glory seeds are now being abused because their chemical structure is similar to LSD. Montana officers did a search warrant at a residence and discovered four cases of Cat Nip even though the owners owned no cats. The reason is because Cat Nip is a stimulant and is commonly mixed with marijuana and smoked. This book sells for $19.99 and is available at www.whenjustsaynodoesntwork.com subscribeAdd this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites         Comments (0)
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