A Detroit police officer blew a .08 at a class training officers to administer breathalyzer tests on April 5.
The officer arrived in the city of Lansing with his parter to participate in the training class taught by Michigan State Police on the use of the machines to detect when someone is legally impaired.
During the presentation, the officer volunteered to be part of a demonstration and blew into the machine.
It turns out that may have been a poor decision, which he perhaps did not realize since he was drunk.
“This was state police training,” Detroit Police Chief James Craig told WNEM.
“[He] blew a .08…. Certainly, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for me, and it may be a problem on how it was handled after that.”
Michigan State Police did not arrest the officer and stated he did not drive to the training, his partner did, stating the officer did not have his gun on him at the training.
But Chief Craig told the officer he cannot be legally impaired during police training and stated he will get to the root of the problem in regards to internal affairs issues, no matter how deep he has to go.
“I want to know what the failures are at and if the failures are at supervision,” Craig said.
“If the failures are at the command level, I’m going to take action. I’m consistent with that.”
Just over a week ago, a Detroit police officer was arrested and fired for selling drugs during her probationary period, according to the Detroit News.
“Early in the day Sunday, we received information from someone that this officer was allegedly involved in drug trafficking, and that she’d made some threats,” Craig said.
“Within hours, she was arrested Sunday evening, along with a companion who was a felon in possession of a stolen gun. The arrests were without incident.”
The Detroit Police Officers Association, the union that represents cops, filed a grievance five days later on Thursday claiming Chief Craig violated the collective bargaining agreement by firing the officer without a probationary evaluation board hearing.
“The way she was treated, to be marched into headquarters in handcuffs and an orange prison jumpsuit was uncalled for,” Department of Police Officers Association Vice President Ronald Thomas said regarding the grievance.
“These are still allegations; we don’t want to have a precedent set where any officer who is accused of a crime is treated that way.”
Chief Craig, pictured above, argues it wasn’t necessary to conduct the hearing to fire an officer on her probationary period.
Because that officer, whose name has also not been released, was never actually charged with a crime.
The 29-year-old unnamed officer would have completed her one-year probationary period in June this year.
