DRE Flashback: Certification, continued

In September I blogged that DRE certification initially came from the prosecution division of the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. Simply, LA prosecutors wanted to be confident of the DRE's expertise before attempting to qualify the officer as an expert in court.  Certification was a means to that end. 

In fact, most of the standards and milestones of the DRE certification process were developed as a practical response to problems and issues. Did you ever wonder why two DRE instructors must sign off on the Certification Progress Log?  Back in the late 1980s, the signature of only one DRE instructor was required.  Two situations caused the LAPD DRE Unit to change it.  (By the way, in the late 1980s the LAPD DRE Unit consisted of  the inimitable Sergeant Dick Studdard, Officer Gary Tetzlaff, and Sergeant Tom Page, yours truly!) The first situation was simply a disagreement between the three of us regarding the readiness of an officer for certification. In the second situation a DRE instructor signed-off on a candidate DRE.  Before the candidate submitted his progress log for certification the DRE instructor telephoned me and confided that he was really wasn't confident of the candidate's readiness for certification.  I recall that Dick, Gary and I had a fairly animated discussion regarding this issue.  After considering some other options, such as requiring that the DRE instructor be of a supervisory rank, Dick suggested that requiring a two instructors sign-off would ensure  the quality control we were seeking.  There was no Technical Advisory Panel at the time so there was no mechanism for a review.  We just made the change by fiat!

In my opinion, the two instructor sign-off requirement is the most important milestone in the DRE certification process.  The candidate DRE must seek the recommendation of experienced DRE instructors. By signing his or her name to the progress log, the DRE instructor affirms that the candidate has sufficient expertise to be welcomed into the DRE community. This process is very similar to what I experienced in my graduate education.  In order to complete my Master's program, I went before a board of three professors who challenged my thesis and peppered me with questions. Only when all three professors approved me did I complete the program.  Very similar to the DRE process.