Peachtree City (GA) Police Department - Comments
AnonymousSupportIndividual
Summary: The commenter, who works in a major metro area, argues that current barriers to collecting toxicology data are significant due to lack of statutory requirements, funding, and training. They support the proposed action by advocating for mandates on sample collection, increased lab funding, and specific training for coroners and law enforcement.
In order to get the toxicology information, the sample has to be collected in the first place. This is a much bigger barrier than most people realize for fatally injured drivers. In many states it is NOT statutorily required to collect a blood sample and the body never goes to a medical examiner's office when the death clearly resulted from a vehicle collision (particularly when the deceased is the at-fault driver or only person involved) - as the case is then "non-prosecutable". Coroners will often not collect a sample because they are not trained to do so, and hospital staff is both disinterested and often not trained to do postmortem blood draws. Even in jurisdictions with law enforcement phlebotomists, those officers are not trained for postmortem draws. This leads to massive gaps in data collection on what contributed to crashes. I work in a major metro area where resources in general are not a problem, but even we continually struggle with this problem. It is even larger in more rural areas. Statutory requirements need to mandate sample collection and also provide adequate funding to the labs to test the additional specimens they would receive after enactment. Further, training is needed for coroners and law enforcement phlebotomists on postmortem sample collection.