Drug Scandal in Boston Police Could be Serious Threat to  Mayor Menino
            Even the New York Times, owner of the Boston Globe, has been unable to control the damage to its political ally, Mayor Tom Menino from the drug scandal in Boston’s Police Department.
            Yesterday, the Globe reported that 75 officers have tested positive for illegal drugs, mostly cocaine, since testing began in 1999. Forty-nine  of those men are still on duty. The other 26 policemen were fired only after they flunked a second test some time after the first one, the Globe reported yesterday.
            Today, the Globe appears to be hoping they can just ignore the scandal and it will die.
            However, many observers don’t believe that is possible and are waiting for “the second shoe to drop.” They point out that the Affidavit from the FBI says that the federal agents have “extensive information” about “illegal conduct of other Boston police officers” and “other public officials.”

 Drug Testing Policy Already Under Scrutiny
            The Globe said yesterday that “the department’s drug testing policy is already under scrutiny” from experts across the country after being exposed last week. The revelation startled many that the leader of the three bad cops targeted by the FBI had tested positive for cocaine in 1999, and yet he kept his job all these years until the FBI busted him last Thursday.  
            Some specialists and department observers told the Globe they were “alarmed by the number of officers testing positive for a ‘hard’ drug such as cocaine.’” They questioned the department's policy that allows an officer to remain on the force after a positive drug test.  The Globe  reported that an officer is not fired until after a second positive test.
             One expert, Mark A. de Bernardo, a labor lawyer in Virginia who is executive director of the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace, said he is startled by the number of Boston officers who used cocaine. He said that while no one tracks national numbers on law enforcement officers who test positive for drugs, it is unusual for so many of the positive results to be for cocaine.
             "In typical drug testing, the number of marijuana positives is going to be three, four, five times the number of cocaine positives," he said. ``That's alarming that cocaine would seem to be the drug of choice for the drug abusers in the Boston Police Department."
             He told the Globe that the number of drug-using officers might be higher than what the testing shows because of the predictability of Boston's annual testing.
"Anybody who fails a drug test when they know a year advance within 30 days of when it's going to be . . . is a person who I consider to be an addict," he said. ``I'd assume that this is just a percentage of those that actually engage in actual drug use because it's not true random testing."
             He also said that by giving officers a second chance, Boston police are straying from the standard set by most other employees where workers are responsible for public safety.
             Some specialists and department observers said they were alarmed by the number of officers testing positive for a "hard" drug such as cocaine and questioned the department's policy that allows an officer to remain on the force after a positive drug test. An officer is not fired until a second positive test.
              "It seems like it's a chronic problem," said Darnell A. Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. ``Here we're trying to deal with the guns and the drugs on the street level, but we have a more strident problem inside the department when we have that many people testing positive for drugs, especially cocaine."
             Unlike Boston, the New York and Los Angeles police departments dismiss officers after a first positive drug test.
             Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer who is now a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told the Globe he believes the Boston police may have an unusually high number of hard-drug users because of its two-strikes policy. The New York Police Department has a very low drug test failure rate because of its zero tolerance policy, he said.
              "Once you establish that people are fired, it does change the complexion," he said. "If an agency says you can use drugs . . . it stands to reason you're going to have a higher rate of people using drugs."
             While 75 Boston officers failed drug tests out of a total force of about 2,000 sworn officers since 1999, at the much larger Los Angeles Police Department, 14 officers have flunked the drug test since March 2000. It employs 9,354 officers, of whom about 3,000 are subjected to random urine tests each year.
             The annual testing began in 1999 after years of negotiating with the city's powerful police unions, which had objected to the tests. In exchange for salary and benefit increases, the unions agreed to a system that gives officers warning by scheduling tests within 30 days of their birthday.