This week, Kyla Lee and Paul Doroshenko discuss a major decision on drug recognition evaluations and why police must strictly follow the required 12-step process in impaired driving investigations.
Drug recognition evaluations are used by police to assess whether a driver is impaired by drugs, but the process is only lawful because it is specifically authorized by the Criminal Code. That means police must follow the required process exactly. In this episode, Kyla and Paul explain why skipping even one step can turn the entire investigation into an unlawful warrantless search.
The decision at the centre of the episode involved a police officer who failed to complete the first step of the DRE process: conducting a breath test. The court rejected the idea that police can simply skip steps they consider unnecessary, emphasizing that there is one recognized 12-step drug influence evaluation and no lawful shortcut around it.
The episode also explores the court’s concerns about tunnel vision and confirmation bias. The judge examined how officers can form early conclusions and then interpret later observations in a way that supports those assumptions. Kyla and Paul discuss why this matters not only for DRE cases, but also for impaired driving investigations more broadly.
For the Ridiculous Driver of the Week, the hosts turn to two teenagers who allegedly drove a riding lawnmower into a Target store while trying to make a viral video. Stream Episode 450 for the full discussion.
