The Eyes Have It
There are few fates worse than being thrown in jail for a crime you didn't commit.
As awful as it sounds, this happens far more frequently than law enforcement would care to admit. Earlier this month, an investigative report out of Tennessee brought to light over 600 cases where stone-cold-sober drivers were wrongfully arrested. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Sadly, this troubling trend of misdiagnosed DUI/DWI/OVI/OWI busts is bubbling up across the country.
But what if there was a way to avoid a huge percentage of these police mistakes?
The good news is a safeguard against improper incarceration already exists -- in the form of breakthrough technology produced by a Montana-based company called Gaize. Their impairment detection ocular tests are a gamechanger for both public safety and human rights.
Let's examine why.
Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It
Put yourself in the shoes of Katie Slayton, one of the people whose world was turned upside down due to bogus charges in the Volunteer State. This single mom saw her son placed in the foster system for nine weeks while she waited for test results to verify that she was in no way impaired on the night in question. All because officers on the scene misunderstood her condition.
Consider the hell Dakarai Larriett was dragged through by Michigan troopers. After credibly insisting that he was in no way inebriated, Dakarai was handed over to uniformed personnel who allegedly made him "defecate publicly" to prove he hadn't ingested evidence. It took almost half a year for the bloodwork to come back and clear his name.
Horror stories like these have consequences for all involved: the unjustly accused, the local agencies that inevitably get sued, and the taxpayers who foot the bill. Whether it's individuals (like Larriett) filing lawsuits in federal court or organizations (such as the ACLU) going the class action route, the price tag for each transgression is steep. For instance, in Colorado, a single settlement ended up costing a satellite city $400,000. That might seem exorbitant for a situation devoid of excruciating details like those previously mentioned; but, when you factor in the potential life-altering effects it can have (in the form of diminished job prospects, permanently tarnished reputations, mental anguish, et cetera), sums of this caliber are defensible.
Diagnosing the problem is simple. People aren't perfect. From the admittedly limited research available, roughly one-half of 1% of interactions produce false positives. Even the best trained authorities in this field, known as drug recognition experts (DRE), cannot be right all the time. They are susceptible to fatigue and to trusting incomplete information. They can also be guilty of murkier motives ranging from purportedly trying to meet quotas to holding (both conscious and unconscious) biases. Obviously, flaws of this nature should not be tolerated.
The profession would benefit from a solution designed to act as a failsafe against human errors. Ideally, it would deliver impeccable results consistent with industry practices and standards.
In other words, society deserves a device like Gaize.
Vision Quest
Working within this sector would be nothing new for Gaize. The brand has already carved out a solid reputation inside the law enforcement community. In fact, the backbone of its proprietary portable equipment was developed using DRE methodology. Their headset performs a variety of eye movement measurements to determine impairment via statistical and machine learning models. Thanks to the firm's affiliated accessible-anywhere apps, the high-resolution ocular data is then logged for instant use and/or future evidentiary purposes.
Bear in mind, this six-minute endeavor is non-invasive, thus offering an added perk: the ability to sidestep the time suck of the blood/urine/saliva testing quagmire. On top of that, the annual cost (averaging roughly $6500/unit) is significantly cheaper than 365 days of notoriously costly biological processing.
Furthermore, the inherent precision of Gaize units allows operators to pinpoint changes in pupil size down to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter. This level of fidelity is impossible for any officer wielding a penlight to replicate. Analogously, it eliminates the chances of drunk or high suspects escaping punishment, since no one can control their pupils at the micrometer level.
Gaize also gives cops a heretofore missing tool to probe for impairment related to narcotics. Unlike alcohol, which follows a correlated path between consumption and inebriation, drugs are a total crap shoot. It is not uncommon for days-old markers to still be present in the body of a sober driver. [This is a particularly noteworthy topic due to the prevalence of legal marijuana use.] According to Gaize CEO Ken Fichtler, traditional biological tests might flag people who are "not really a threat to the roadways." His flagship product does not fall prey to this residue/enzyme trap. Rather, the headset compares its calculations (over 100,000 per person) to the ever-expanding library of unique eye responses associated with various drug categories.
Looking Ahead
Given everything Gaize can do, it's a wonder most police departments don't utilize it yet. One would think the concept of blending peak accuracy with minimized liability would be the ultimate selling point. Installing a cutting-edge safety net under the overwhelmingly competent force seems like a no-brainer. Alas, the suddenly dynamic drug tech market has only recently woken up "after a long period of little innovation," as Fichtler put it. "Our biggest challenge is awareness."
In the interest of the public good, Americans should be pushing for mass adoption of Gaize. For every PD with access to a headset, protocol could be changed to confirm officer evaluations... or, at the very least, make it mandatory when citizens below the .08 chemical threshold are brought to the station under suspicion of drug use. Imagine how many wrongly detained individuals could be immediately discharged each year. Imagine all the heartache that would spare.
Keeping the innocent from being tossed in cells should be something on which we can all agree.
Note: the post above may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion.
This site does not render legal advice, nor does it intend to replace legal advice.
