Steroid Abuse Has Become A Major Problem Among Police Officers

July 8, 2013




Investigations in Oregon, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, New York and other states have in recent years found disturbing evidence of police officers abusing steroids. But Connecticut police insist they’ve never seen it here.

A national expert who’s been studying steroid use in all types of subcultures from athletics to the military believes “tens of thousands” of cops all across the U.S. are on such illegal drugs. But the head of the largest police union in this state, a man who spent 20 years with the Milford P.D., says the issue has never even been raised in any Connecticut disciplinary hearing he knows about.
A recent scandal in New Jersey turned up 248 public safety officials — most of them cops — who were getting steroids prescribed by a steroid-abusing doctor, and New Jersey officials responded by ordering random police drug testing. But a Connecticut State Police spokesman says his department doesn’t do that.



Just last month, a federal appeals court ruled a New Jersey police chief was within his rights to order several of his officers to undergo testing for steroids, strip them of their weapons and put them on desk duty.
But state Rep. Stephen Dargan, the long-time co-chairman of the Connecticut legislature’s Public Safety Committee, says he’s never, ever even heard of questions about police steroid abuse being voiced in this state. “That’s a new one on me,” he says.
John Hoberman is a University of Texas professor who’s spent 25 years studying the social implications of widespread steroid use among professional and amateur athletes, body builders, the military and police.
And statements from Connecticut law enforcement officials that they don’t believe cop-steroid abuse is a significant problem here, or the fact that the issue hasn’t even been raised before in this state, comes as no surprise to Hoberman.
“This has been a suppressed and under-reported story,” he says of steroids and the cops. He has found most police departments “prefer to deal with [steroid abuse] as an internal matter” rather than have it become public.
Hoberman says he’s collected “hundreds of reports” of such cases from around the U.S., Canada, Scotland and England.
“This is not an isolated phenomenon — it’s a country-wide phenomenon,” he adds.
The biggest concern most people have over steroid “juiced” cops is the potential for increased aggression in someone who’s armed and trained to use everything from pepper spray and stun guns to firearms. And one result of the New Jersey scandal is a spate of civil lawsuits claiming excessive use of force by some of the officers implicated in steroid abuse.
Steroid Abuse Has Become A Major Problem Among Police Officers [continued]

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