By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
Having been hired here three years ago, he’s one of the newer officers in the village, but Liverpool Police Officer Kevin Greenwood is quickly becoming one of the department’s most valuable members.
Last year he was named 2018 Officer of the Year and was also recognized by the Onondaga County Traffic Safety Advisory Board for his tenacious traffic-enforcement efforts.
Last April, he received an award from the state’s Stop-DWI program.
Now, he’s expanding his horizons to learn how to identify the intoxicating effects of all sorts of drugs on motorists and suspects in criminal cases.
After graduating from New York State’s Drug Evaluation and Classification Program next month, he’ll become one of just 15 Drug Recognition Experts among law enforcement officers in Onondaga County.
Currently, the State Police have 11 DREs working locally, the Sheriff’s Office has two and the Syracuse Police Department has one. Greenwood will become the first village cop in CNY to qualify as a DRE.
Just landing a spot in the DRE program was an accomplishment. Forty-four area officers applied, but just 17 — including Greenwood — were admitted.
Over his three years here, Greenwood has focused on enforcing traffic laws. The county’s Traffic Safety Advisory Board found that he was the county’s top overall performer from a village police department.
Greenwood issued a total of 1,653 vehicle and traffic citations from Oct. 1, 2017, through Sept. 30, 2018. During calendar year 2018, he arrested 43 individuals for DWI of which 12 were aggravated DWI.
He also made 13 arrests for criminal possession of controlled substances resulting from traffic stops and wrote more than 200 speeding tickets.
“These days there are more people driving around high on drugs rather than high on alcohol,” Greenwood said. “I’ve always liked the V&T stuff, so when I heard about the DRE program, I thought, ‘This is crazy interesting.’”
The DRE program was developed by the Los Angeles Police Department in the early 1970s after its officers noticed that many people arrested for driving under the influence had very low or zero alcohol concentrations. The L.A. officers suspected that those people were under the influence of drugs but lacked the necessary training to confirm those observations.
DREs learn how to identify indications of seven classes of drugs: depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, dissociative anesthetics, narcotic analgesics, inhalants and cannabis.
“You have to study things like body language, and of course you back that up with medical readings,” Greenwood said. “Being a DRE will make me better out on the road.”
The DRE program trains officers through a three-phase process. Greenwood begins his studies at a DRE pre-school session in Auburn, followed by two weeks of classes in Arizona and concluding with 80 hours of expert field certification.
State and county Stop-DWI programs are paying for Greenwood’s DRE training, according to Liverpool Police Chief Don Morris.
“DREs only make the local roads safer,” Greenwood said.
