Code of Ordinances

Sec­tion 1.  State­ment of Coun­ty Pol­i­cy.  It is the pol­i­cy of the Employ­er that the pub­lic has the rea­son­able right to expect per­sons employed by the Employ­er to be free from the effects of drugs and alco­hol at all times.  The Employ­er has the right to expect its offi­cers to report for work fit and able for duty and to abide by all the laws.  The pur­pos­es of this pol­i­cy shall be achieved in such a man­ner as to not vio­late any estab­lished rights of the officers.

Sec­tion 2.  Pro­hi­bi­tions.  Offi­cers shall be pro­hib­it­ed from:

(A) con­sum­ing or pos­sess­ing alco­hol at any time dur­ing the work day or any­where on any Coun­ty premis­es or job sites, includ­ing all Coun­ty build­ings, prop­er­ties, vehi­cles and the officer’s per­son­al vehi­cle while engaged in Coun­ty busi­ness, except as required in the line of duty, or ille­gal drugs at any time and any place except as required in line of duty;

(B) ille­gal­ly sell­ing, pur­chas­ing or deliv­er­ing any ille­gal drug, at any time or place, except as required in the line of duty;

(C) being under the influ­ence of alco­hol dur­ing the course of the work day;

(D) fail­ing to report to their super­vi­sor any known adverse side effects of med­ica­tion or pre­scrip­tion drugs, which they are taking.

Sec­tion 3.  Drug and Alco­hol Test­ing Per­mit­ted.  Where Employ­er has rea­son­able sus­pi­cion to believe that an offi­cer is then under the influ­ence of alco­hol or ille­gal drugs dur­ing the course of the work day, Employ­er shall have the right to require the offi­cer to sub­mit to alco­hol or drug test­ing as set forth in this Agree­ment.  A super­vi­sor must cer­ti­fy his rea­son­able sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing the affect­ed offi­cer pri­or to any order to sub­mit to the test­ing autho­rized here­in.  There shall be no ran­dom or unit-wide test­ing of offi­cers, except ran­dom test­ing of an indi­vid­ual offi­cer as autho­rized in Sec­tion 8 below.  The fore­go­ing shall not lim­it the right of Employ­er to con­duct such test as it may deem appro­pri­ate for per­sons seek­ing employ­ment as offi­cers pri­or to their date of hire.  Offi­cers shall dis­close the use of pre­scrip­tion drugs, to the Sher­iff, if in the opin­ion of the pre­scrib­ing physi­cian, the drug may affect the offi­cer in the per­for­mance of his duty.

Sec­tion 4.  Order to Sub­mit to Test­ing.  At the time an offi­cer is ordered to sub­mit to test­ing autho­rized by this Agree­ment, the Employ­er shall pro­vide the offi­cer with­in two (2) writ­ten notice of the order, set­ting forth all of the objec­tive facts and rea­son­able infer­ences drawn from those facts which have formed the basis of the order to test.  The offi­cer shall be per­mit­ted an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sult with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the FOP or legal coun­sel at the time the order is giv­en.  No ques­tion­ing of the offi­cer shall be con­duct­ed with­out first afford­ing the offi­cer an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sult FOP or legal coun­sel.  Refusal to sub­mit to such test­ing may sub­ject the offi­cer to dis­ci­pline, but the officer’s tak­ing of the test shall not be con­strued as a waiv­er of any objec­tion or rights that he may have.

Sec­tion 5.  Tests to be Con­duct­ed.  In con­duct­ing the test­ing autho­rized by this Agree­ment, the Employ­er shall:

(A) use only a clin­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry or hos­pi­tal facil­i­ty that is licensed pur­suant to the Illi­nois Clin­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry Act that has or is capa­ble of being accred­it­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Drug Abuse (NIDA);

(B) insure that the lab­o­ra­to­ry or facil­i­ty select­ed con­forms to all NIDA standards;

(C) estab­lish a chain of cus­tody pro­ce­dure for both sam­ple col­lec­tion and test­ing that will insure the integri­ty of the iden­ti­ty of each sam­ple and test result.  No offi­cer cov­ered by this Agree­ment shall be per­mit­ted at any time to become a part of such chain of custody;

(D) col­lect a suf­fi­cient sam­ple of the same bod­i­ly flu­id or mate­r­i­al from an offi­cer to allow for ini­tial screen­ing, a con­fir­ma­to­ry test, and a suf­fi­cient amount to be set aside reserved for lat­er test­ing if request­ed by the officer;

(E) col­lect sam­ples in such a man­ner as to pre­serve the indi­vid­ual officer’s right to pri­va­cy, insure a high degree of secu­ri­ty for the sam­ple and its free­dom from adul­ter­ation.  Offi­cers shall not be wit­nessed by any­one while sub­mit­ting a sam­ple, except in cir­cum­stances where the lab­o­ra­to­ry or facil­i­ty does not have a “clean room” for sub­mit­ting sam­ples or where there is rea­son­able belief that the offi­cer will attempt to com­pro­mise the accu­ra­cy of the test­ing procedure.

(F) con­firm any sam­ple that tests pos­i­tive in the ini­tial screen­ing for drugs by test­ing the sec­ond por­tion of the same sam­ple by gas chro­matog­ra­phy, plus mass spec­trom­e­try or an equiv­a­lent or bet­ter sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accu­rate and accept­ed method that pro­vides quan­ti­ta­tive data about the detect­ed drug metabolites;

(G) pro­vide the offi­cer test­ed with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to have the addi­tion­al sam­ple test­ed by a clin­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ry or hos­pi­tal facil­i­ty of the officer’s own choos­ing, at the officer’s own expens­es; pro­vid­ed the offi­cer noti­fies the Sher­iff with­in sev­en­­ty-two (72) hours of receiv­ing the results of the tests;

(H) require that the lab­o­ra­to­ry or hos­pi­tal facil­i­ty report to the Employ­er that a blood or urine sam­ple is pos­i­tive only if both the ini­tial screen­ing and con­fir­ma­tion test are pos­i­tive for a par­tic­u­lar drug.  The par­ties agree that should any infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing such test­ing or the results there­of be obtained by the Employ­er incon­sis­tent with the under­stand­ings expressed here­in (e.g. billings for test­ing that reveal the nature or num­ber of tests admin­is­tered), the Employ­er will not use such infor­ma­tion in any man­ner or forum adverse to the officer’s interests;

(I) require that with regard to alco­hol test­ing, for the pur­pose of deter­min­ing whether the offi­cer is under the influ­ence of alco­hol, test results that show an alco­hol con­cen­tra­tion of .10 or more based upon the grams of alco­hol per 100 mil­li­liters of blood be con­sid­ered pos­i­tive (Note: the fore­go­ing stan­dard shall not pre­clude the Employ­er from attempt­ing to show that test results below .10 demon­strate that the offi­cer was under the influ­ence, but the Employ­er shall bear the bur­den of proof in such cases;

(J) pro­vide each offi­cer test­ed with a copy of all infor­ma­tion and reports received by the Coun­ty in con­nec­tion with the test­ing and the results;

(K) insure that no offi­cer is the sub­ject of any adverse employ­ment action except emer­gency tem­po­rary reas­sign­ment with pay dur­ing the pen­den­cy of any test­ing pro­ce­dure.  Any such emer­gency reas­sign­ment shall be imme­di­ate­ly dis­con­tin­ued in the event of a neg­a­tive test result.

Sec­tion 6.  Right to Con­test.  The Union and/or the offi­cer, with or with­out the Union, shall have the right to file a griev­ance con­cern­ing any test­ing per­mit­ted by this Agree­ment, con­test­ing the basis for the order to sub­mit to the tests, the right to test, the admin­is­tra­tion of the tests, the sig­nif­i­cance and accu­ra­cy of the tests, the con­se­quences of the test­ing or results or any oth­er alleged vio­la­tion of this Agree­ment.  Such griev­ances shall be com­menced at Step 2 of the griev­ance pro­ce­dure.  It is agreed that the par­ties in no way intend or have in any man­ner restrict­ed, dimin­ished or oth­er­wise impaired any legal rights that offi­cers may have with regard to such test­ing.  Offi­cers retain any such rights as may exist and may pur­sue the same in their own dis­cre­tion, with or with­out the assis­tance of theUnion.

Sec­tion 7.  Vol­un­tary Requests for Assis­tance.  The Employ­er shall take no adverse employ­ment action against an offi­cer who vol­un­tar­i­ly seeks treat­ment, coun­sel­ing or oth­er sup­port for an alco­hol or drug relat­ed prob­lem, pro­vid­ed the offi­cer vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­clos­es his prob­lem pri­or to detec­tion of the prob­lem.  The Employ­er shall make avail­able through its Employ­ee Assis­tance Pro­gram a means by which the offi­cer 
may obtain refer­rals and treat­ment.  First time vol­un­tary requests shall be con­fi­den­tial and any infor­ma­tion received by the Employ­er, through the EAP in the first instance, shall not be used in any man­ner adverse to the officer’s inter­ests.  This Sec­tion only pro­vides pro­tec­tion to offi­cers for the first instance of alco­hol or drug-relat­ed prob­lems.  Offi­cers may uti­lize accrued paid leave for treat­ment under this Section.

Sec­tion 8.  Dis­ci­pline.  Offi­cers who test pos­i­tive on both the ini­tial and con­fir­ma­to­ry tests for ille­gal drugs may be sub­ject to dis­ci­pline.  The offi­cer will be enti­tled to assert dur­ing any dis­ci­pli­nary process and the Mer­it Com­mis­sion will have the right to con­sid­er that treat­ment in lieu of or in addi­tion to some dis­ci­pli­nary action is appro­pri­ate.  In the first instance pri­or to detec­tion by Employ­er that an offi­cer is found to be under the influ­ence of alco­hol, and all offi­cers who vol­un­tar­i­ly seek assis­tance with drug and/or alco­hol relat­ed prob­lems pri­or to detec­tion by the Employ­er, shall not be sub­ject to any dis­ci­pli­nary action by the Employ­er.  The fore­go­ing is con­di­tioned upon:

(A) the offi­cer agree­ing to appro­pri­ate treat­ment as deter­mined by the physician(s) involved;

(B) the offi­cer dis­con­tin­ues his use of ille­gal drugs or abuse of alcohol;

(C) the offi­cer suc­cess­ful­ly com­pletes the course of treat­ment pre­scribed, includ­ing an “after-care” group for a peri­od of up to twelve (12) months, or as pre­scribed by a physi­cian if longer than eleven (11) months;

(D) the offi­cer agrees to sub­mit to ran­dom test­ing dur­ing hours of work dur­ing the peri­od of “after-care”.

Offi­cers who do not agree to the fore­go­ing, or who test pos­i­tive a sec­ond or sub­se­quent time for the pres­ence of ille­gal drugs, or for the pres­ence of alco­hol dur­ing the hours of work shall be sub­ject to dis­ci­pline, up to and includ­ing dis­charge.  The fore­go­ing shall not be con­strued as an oblig­a­tion on the part of the Employ­er to retain an offi­cer on active sta­tus through­out the peri­od of reha­bil­i­ta­tion if it is appro­pri­ate­ly deter­mined that the officer’s cur­rent use of alco­hol or drugs pre­vents such indi­vid­ual from per­form­ing the duties of a police offi­cer or whose con­tin­u­ance on active sta­tus would con­sti­tute a direct threat to the prop­er­ty or safe­ty of oth­ers.  Offi­cers shall be afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to uti­lize accu­mu­lat­ed paid leave or take an unpaid leave of absence pend­ing treat­ment as to the first instance of a vio­la­tion.  The fore­go­ing shall not lim­it the Employer’s right to dis­ci­pline offi­cers for mis­con­duct pro­vid­ed such dis­ci­pline shall not be increased or imposed due to alco­hol or drug abuse.

Offi­cers who are tak­ing pre­scribed or over-the-counter med­ica­tion that has adverse side effects which may inter­fere with the officer’s abil­i­ty to per­form his nor­mal duties may be tem­porar­i­ly reas­signed with pay to oth­er more suit­able police duties or relieved of duty uti­liz­ing accu­mu­lat­ed paid time as avail­able, if mutu­al­ly agreed.