Sergeant Thomas E. Page, the Officer-in-Charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) Unit, began his law enforcement career in 1977 as an officer with the Detroit Police Department (DPD). After serving the DPD for over three years, Sergeant Page joined the LAPD in 1981.
Before undertaking a law enforcement career, Sergeant Page served the Wayne County, Michigan Health Department for five years as a public health worker and supervisor.
Sergeant Page was the coordinator for the 1985 Los Angeles Field Validation Test (173 case study) of the DRE Procedure. This study validated the effectiveness and reliability of a standardized and systematic approach to drug influence recognition. These procedures have been adopted nationwide by professionals in government, law enforcement, the military, private industry and health care.
Sergeant Page has taught drug influence recognition, behavioral indicators of drug use, drug user identification for supervisors, and other related topics to a wide range of audiences. These audiences include the American Bar Association, Northwestern University Traffic Institute, the California Department of Mental Health, the Swedish National Police Federation in Stockholm, the Russian Procuracy Training Academy in Moscow, the Department of the Army, nurses, physicians, psychiatrists, toxicologists, and private industry.
Sergeant Page frequently provides testimony in court on drug influence signs and symptoms, horizontal gaze nystagmus, and the standardized field sobriety test. He has been accepted as an expert in courts in California, Arizona, New York, Maryland, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Iowa and Florida. He also serves as the law enforcement representative on a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) sponsored committee that developed curricula to train prosecutors to effectively prosecute the "drugged" driver.
Sergeant Page has authored numerous articles on drug user detection techniques. His credits include Police Chief Magazine, The Siren, The DRE, the Victoria Australia Parliamentary Road Safety Committee Report, and the 1988 International Congress on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Oslo, Norway.
He is the first General Chairperson of the DRE Section of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and is a member of IACP's DRE Technical Advisory Panel. Sergeant Page is also an advisory member of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science's Drugs and Driving Committee.
He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Industrial Psychology, and his Master of Arts degree in Urban Affairs from the University of Detroit.
If you want to contact Sergeant Page, you can do so through his e-mail.
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This page was updated 2-21-98
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