A significant number of police officers are law breakers. How? They take illegal anabolic steroids.
By SHAUN KING
JUL 27, 2016
More than ever, athletes are tested for drugs — performance enhancing and otherwise. The screenings are scientific, accurate, random and constant. When busted, the consequences are swift and costly. This is the new reality for modern day athletics. The idea that drugs impact not only the performance of athletes, but are detrimental to their long term health and well-being, is widely accepted.
More than almost any non-athletic profession in America, policing, particularly in the field, requires a serious level of focus, acuity, agility, coordination and fitness. Unlike athletes, police officers are armed and deputized to use lethal force whenever they feel it is required to do their job safely. Unlike athletes, police also face a heavily armed society. Drug use — be it cocaine, marijuana, steroids, HGH or even alcohol — could seriously impact an officer's performance.
This should not be debatable.
Good policing requires peak performance and snap judgments. Drugs of any kind could impair that judgment. Some drugs, like steroids, could cause police officers to be quick to anger.
Unfortunately, most police officers are only tested for drugs when they enter the police force. This should change immediately.
Police officers should be regularly and randomly screened for all drugs. They should be immediately screened after each and every use of force incident on the day of the incident and for a period of 60-90 days after the incident. Any use of physical force should immediately trigger a mandatory screening. It should just be a routine of policing like it is for athletes.
This suggestion is not random.
Steroid use, as it turns out, is the not-so-quiet little secret of state and city police departments as well as municipal fire departments across the country, not that this should come as much of a surprise." Police officers often find themselves in situations requiring the use of physical force to either subdue or restrain suspects to effect custodial arrests. Therefore, most are occupationally-mandated, functional strength-athletes, whether they wish to pursue this weight training regimens recreationally or not
Steroids work to increase muscle mass and strength androgenically, as well as anabolically.The administration of anabolic steroids - derivatives of testosterone - therefore has a directmasculinizing effect on users.49 This masculinizing effect, moreover, has psychological as well asphysical implications, as both Pope and Sullivan have noted. The psychological effects of steroid administration - which one might associate with traditionally-labeled "masculine" behavior -include emotional rigidity, risk-tolerance, aggression, combativeness, and self-confidence, thoughthese effects are by and large anecdotally documented.'
With it, the community-based ethic of policing went too. Authoritarianism,disguised as principled authority, thus took over, swaddled in patriotism, moralism, and religiosity under direct federal sponsorship.
This is a widespread problem. Most police departments have what amounts to tolerance policy toward officers using anabolic steroids.
Testing is the right thing for the Public’s safety, and the right thing to do for officers’ families’ well being.
Does your local police department test for anabolic steroids?
Find out.
UPDATE:
Possible physical side effects include the following:
- High blood cholesterol levels - high blood cholesterol levels may lead to cardiovascular problems
- Severe acne
- Thinning of hair and baldness
- Fluid retention
- High blood pressure
- Liver disorders (liver damage and jaundice)
- Steroids can affect fetal development during pregnancy
- Risk of contracting HIV and other blood-borne diseases from sharing infected needles
- Sexual & reproductive disorders:
| Males |
Females |
- Atrophy (wasting away of tissues or organs) of the testicles
- Loss of sexual drive
- Diminished or decreased sperm production
- Breast and prostate enlargement
- Decreased hormone levels
- Sterility
|
- Menstrual irregularities
- Infertility
- Masculinizing effects such as facial hair,
diminished breast size, permanently deepened voice,
and enlargement of the clitoris.
|
Possible psychological disturbances include the following:
- Mood swings (including manic-like symptoms leading to violence)
- Impaired judgment (stemming from feelings of invincibility)
- Depression
- Nervousness
- Extreme irritability
- Delusions
- Hostility and aggression
From October of last year:
The final specific recommendation would add the phrase "including testing for anabolic steroids" to existing language on drug and alcohol testing if there's a "reasonable suspicion" the employee was under the influence on the job. In its rational, Mpls for a Better Police Contract says steroids "cause psychological changes that endanger the community."
Gene Sanders, a Spokane, Wash., police psychologist, estimates that up to 25 percent of all police officers in urban settings with gangs and high crime use steroids — many of them defensively.
Typically, departments "turn a blind eye," to steroid use, according to Sanders.
Roid rage"?
