LAPD Asks Union Talks on Random Drug Testing : Law enforcement: League members to be polled before mandatory policy that would include top brass is accepted. President doesn’t oppose move.

The Los Angeles Police Department may soon get what its chief has been seeking for the last several years--mandatory random drug testing for all sworn police officers, including top brass.

In its latest bid to implement such a policy, the department has submitted a formal proposal to begin discussions on the issue with the city’s largest police union, whose leader said this week that he does not oppose such a move.

Lt. George Aliano, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said, however, that he wants any testing policy to be negotiated between the department and the union to ensure adequate controls. The union, he said, must first poll its 7,800 members to see if they would oppose opening negotiations on their contract with the city, more than two years before it expires. If the policy is immediately implemented, officials said, the LAPD will be the first major California police department and one of only a handful in the nation to have mandatory random testing of all officers.

Aliano said he suspects that Los Angeles police officers will support the testing in the union poll, which he expects to be conducted over the next six weeks.

“They want to show that they are drug-free just like everybody else,” he said. But “if my members felt strongly against reopening the contract, then I would resist” the immediate implementation of the policy.

It is unclear how the LAPD will proceed if resistance is mounted. But Cmdr. William Booth, a department spokesman, said it “would not change” the goal of Chief Daryl F. Gates and other police officials to put the policy in place. He said, however, that the department wants to comply with state labor laws that require police management to “meet and confer” in good faith with the union before making significant changes in its members’ work conditions.

Department officials became more confident that their proposed policy could withstand legal challenge after the U.S. Supreme Court last Monday declined to hear a union challenge to the Boston Police Department’s 3-year-old mandatory random testing program.

“We said hallelujah” after hearing the news of the Supreme Court’s action on Monday, Booth said, “but our program and meet-and-confer action have been moving in that direction for some time.”

Aliano said he received the department’s latest proposal two weeks ago. Chief Gates, however, has been pushing for mandatory drug testing for at least three years. He has spoken out on the issue in editorials, speeches and in trade magazines, arguing that citizens should have the assurance that the people who respond to them in emergencies are drug-free.

Last year, Booth said, 10 LAPD officers, including two new hires who were still on probation, either were fired or resigned because of drug-connected administrative actions leveled against them. Aliano said his union has been hesitant to endorse a random drug-testing policy in Los Angeles in the past because the legality of such a policy had not been resolved by the courts.

Detta Roberts, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said the Supreme Court ruling will prompt a review of that department’s policy, which presently does not require random drug testing.

“In light of the new developments,” Roberts said, “we are giving the issue new considerations.”

Although some officials believe that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Boston case has resolved the issue, others noted that the justices did not comment directly on the program’s constitutionality and could agree to hear a challenge in a future case. Under existing policy, the only LAPD officers who can be forced to undergo random testing are new hires during their first 18 months of employment. Officers who are strongly suspected of drug use can be required to take a test. If they refuse, they can be administratively charged with insubordination.

Such policies as well as voluntary testing programs are typical of law enforcement agencies in California and throughout the nation, observers say, but that might change significantly in light of the Boston case.

Kevin McDermott, legal counsel for the Boston Police Department said last Thursday that since the Supreme Court’s action, queries about the Boston program have poured in to him from departments around the country.

Al Cooper, a lobbyist for the Sacramento-based California Peace Officers Assn., said random drug testing for police officers has recently been gaining support among the general public and in the courts and may be the wave of the future.

“I think you’ll see quite a bit of it because the officers themselves want to show people that they are drug-free,” Cooper said.