Blue Line

News
Yukon getting $2.3 million for police training, drug-testing devices

July 22, 2019  By Staff


Yukon is getting federal money for drug-testing devices and for training for officers to test drivers for drug impairment, the federal government announced last Tuesday, as reported by CBC.

The funding, about $2.3 million, comes from a pot of $81 million previously announced for public and road safety, CBC noted. More from that news story below:

“This is about giving the right tools to the RCMP so that individuals who choose to operate a motor vehicle after they’ve consumed some sort of drug or alcohol will be caught,” Tracy-Anne McPhee, the territory’s minister of justice, said at the announcement in Whitehorse.

The drug-testing devices include the Drager DrugTest 5000 and another called the SoToxa.

Advertisement

Officers will be trained to perform standardized field sobriety testing (SFST) and so-called drug recognition expert evaluations.

Right now, 22 Mounties have been trained in SFST, and 15 more are going to be trained soon, McPhee said. Yukon’s government has committed to have about one-third of its officers trained by 2023.

When an RCMP officer without this kind of training pulls over a suspected impaired driver, McPhee said a trained officer would be made available.

The territory has already spent some money for these efforts, which should be recovered through the aforementioned federal funding, McPhee said.

Part of the funding will also be used on a data collection project which will entail developing a national standardized measurement of drug-impaired driving.

Find the original news story here.

 


Print this page

Advertisement

Stories continue below