 So, the playhouse put into the bill an inventory blaster. By the way, we've never met, I don't think. I'm Dick Sears. I'm Andrea Dexter-Kutper. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Transportation matters. I'm Jeanette White from Wyden County. Nice to meet you. Hello, I'm Jeanette. Alison, I go to Windsor County. Joe Benning from Caledonia County. Is that me? You're serving the Senate transportation committee? Mostly, yes. Senators. My condolences. You can tell them to say that. Okay, we have an amendment here that dated 47 to you. So, what you have before you, the two pieces of paper, is the one that says draft number 6.1, H.529, and the top left-hand corner. Section 28 is what was put into the T-bill by House transportation and then not changed by Senate transportation. What you have, draft number 2.1, S.54, 417. This is language that Bryn has been working on related to other roadside testing issues. And she had said that the committee would be interested in seeing this language. Exactly the same as section 28, except on line 6-7, it's adding some language, which I believe is highlighted. Which one? We're on evidentiary blood samples. Yes. Yeah, so you've got two versions of the same section. The one that does not have highlighting on it and is in the middle of other text, that is what is currently in the T-bill as past the House and the amendment from the Senate. The T-bill right now is not appropriation. Right there. I am very confused here. Well, after you get a warrant. No, no, no. I'm confused about what we're looking at. Which one are we looking at? I'm looking at the one that stated 417, draft 2.1, to S.54, which is our middle on marijuana. But this is the language that Bryn has been working on for that real-time testing that the House is thinking about. And what is this? This is what is currently in the T-bill as past the House and Senate Transportation's amendment to the T-bill. The language. If you were to vote after the bill comes out appropriated. I see they put this in here. They put it in the T-bill. Okay. And the concern that I have, two, one is this satisfies one of my concerns. The second is to make sure that a police officer who may or may not be an EMT is not able to draw the blood. Yeah. Okay. And the only difference between the two is what is highlighted. It's the clause that goes out of medical facility, et cetera, et cetera. We were to be able to add that language to as an amendment from, I guess, the five of us or whoever wants to join in that. I would like to amend the T-bill or have Senate Transportation amended. I'll talk to Dick Masser. Yeah. This, if I'm reading this right, it still does not. It still allows the law enforcement officer to withdraw blood. Right. That's why I wanted to change. We need to have, it shouldn't be somebody who isn't trained to draw on blood. Right. So, but this language doesn't do that. Well, don't forget, this language for oral swab for saliva. Okay. But we would change this so that it would have to be okay. Change this language to make clear that it's got to be somebody who's trained. Okay. EMT. Okay. And this is all after a warrant. Okay. Yeah, I get that. I'm confused. Why don't we get, what are you confused about? This all seems to be related to blood samples. But you're saying it was language drafted for oral swans? And 2.1 that you have, one of you would not be able to highlight was drafted for the oral swab in the House Judiciary Committee. It was drafted in conjunction with language on oral swabs. This is one page of, I think, almost 20 pages that Bryn had worked on. The only deal with the drawing of blood. Right. Okay. The House has taken on saliva. Yeah. They like saliva. And can I ask about the current state of the law? So it's adding intermediate or advanced emergency medical technician or paramedic. Yep. So currently it can only be. The first listed ones. Physician, licensed nurse, medical technician, physician assistant, medical technologist, and laboratory assistant. This at a medical facility, the highlighted language. Without that, the current state of affairs allows you to draw where? My understanding is that you need to get to where those people are, which would most likely be a hospital. Could they do it reverse? Have a doctor come out to the roadside? Yeah. I think under this language you could. I'm sorry, under existing. Under existing law you could, which the highlighted language would change. So can I ask a question? Yeah. Where does a DRE presently draw blood? They don't. They get a technician? No, no. They get a sort of. A DRE when they get presently. A DRE when they bring a person to the station. They bring them to an emergency room. Where if the bottomist draws the blood, or someone else who's trained in drawing blood, the police officer doesn't, but they have to get the search warrant first. I mean, this does not change that at all. Right. And this is really just, if you look at the highlighted, sorry, the underlying language in both, is it's expanding who can draw the blood. And then if you look at the person that has the highlighting, it's narrowing the locations where the blood can be drawn. I'm concerned about this whole thing, but I sense both committees have already passed it. I was up getting my blood drawn earlier in the session, a Monday morning because it's the only time you can do it. And I'm waiting. I had appointments and everything else. And I waited in the hospital for over an hour. And the train for the bottomist was unable to draw blood from the patient, which held up everything. You can understand the frustration of a police officer trying to do that and having to wait an hour with somebody who's under the influence, they believe under the influence of alcohol or another drug. And so I understand all this. I'm just concerned that we don't have any fences around it. I'm really concerned about having a law enforcement draw blood because I had blood drawn. And the phlebotomist could not get it out. And they had to call for the chief person. And when he finally got in there, it sprayed all over him and everybody else. I don't want some law enforcement person doing that roadside. We're going to put in here clearly the law enforcement officer, even if they're a trained EMT, is not able to draw the blood. So that's one, number one. Number two is that they have to do it in this description here. And you had a little change. Well, I just wrote a law enforcement officer may add a medical facility, police or fire department or other safe and clean location, have blood drawn. I mean, have blood drawn. So the way, however, the length. The way I read this is in the first part, you're listing who can draw the blood. You can only do it at the request of a law enforcement. And it can only happen at these places. So I do not read this as a law enforcement officer may add a medical facility. It's at the request of the law enforcement officer, triggering all those people above that draw the blood. The law enforcement officer, also an EMT, they're not going to be allowed. It's one of the clear statement law enforcement can't. I don't even know who to ask this question of because it's apparently languages being introduced and intermediate or advanced emergency medical technician says to me that there's a lower level somewhere. They're trained. So there's no such thing as a rookie. It's not yet reached the intermediate level. There's EMRs. Well, we have some witnesses here. Why don't we ask the $64,000 question is our whole intermediates in paramedics authorized to draw the blood. I guess we have witnesses. But I believe it's in their scope of practice. Good. Thank you very much. Major, do you have? He's still a major. I wish. Oh, the center. I'd love to promote people here. You just got me two ranks. Two steps at a time. All right. We'll try. And what I can answer, Dr. Conti from the forensic lab. We'll be able to have Sergeant J. Reagan. Yes. Who is our DRE expert. Would you like to join us right at the table? Sergeant. What barracks are you on? We're at Willis. Well, thanks. I'm happy where I am. But you could be a captain soon. Lieutenant, please. So the purpose of supporting this is it's to allow, and these are trained. And to answer your question about the EMTs, there are certain levels. I'll let the doctor get a little more into that. But this requires extensive training. This isn't just like your baseline EMT. That can just roll up to any scene. But the doctor could probably speak to their cough case a little better than that. We agree in the fact of keeping law enforcement separate from drawing blood. We just need to keep those separate. This is specifically for what is outlined in the bill. Physicians, EMTs, paramedics, so to speak. Our goal is to minimize the time that someone's in custody and to essentially avoid the stigma of bringing them into an emergency department, taking up a bed, taking the attention of emergency doctors to draw blood. Unfortunately, at times we deal with intoxicated or under the impairment individuals who are hostile. So now for us to go through the part of where we're drawing blood, we're now bringing them a hostile person into a non-hostile environment. And we are at the whim of what's happening or not happening in the emergency department, and we may have to sit and wait for a while. Unfortunately, patients place a factor with some of these individuals, and the longer they have to wait, the more hostile, disgruntled they get. And to disrupt a scene where they're trying to do nothing but give the best healthcare to the people in need. If that person refuses, do you have a situation like the one in Southern Utah where the police officers arrested the nurses or not? Oh, if they're not, if the person refuses, and then the hospital staff refuses, you can probably speak to that a little bit better than I can. So I'm going to refer to Sergeant on those situations. No. There's no situation that we're not going to find themselves in a position where in Utah, emergency room nurses drag out of her practice. What happens is if a person, one of two parallel roads will happen. If a warrant is granted and a person who says, no, I still don't want you to do this, but they are not physically resisting, then we'll still draw the blood. Some hospitals for their own practices say, well, the person is still not consenting, so we're not going to do it. And that's where it stops. That may result in another charge. So under this, you're stopped. The person on the side of the road, I have reason to believe that they're intoxicated or that they're driving impaired by another drug other than alcohol. You get a search warrant from a judicial officer, and then you would right now would go to an emergency room or some other place to draw, have the blood drawn. This would allow you to go back to the barracks and have it done. And what we're, I think what we're considering here is adding language that would be a little more definitive of where it could be done. I particularly don't want to have it done on the roadside. I don't want, you know, I consider it maybe situations where somebody's in a bad accident and you've gotten there. They would usually get to the hospital anyway and where you would get the order. But I'm just concerned it would not be done roadside and I'm concerned it would be done in a more sterile environment than maybe there's some of the holding cells that I've been in in different teams of departments. And certainly leave that up to the experts. If a paramedic is in a holding cell and says this is not an environment I want to do this in, then we would just literally transfer that subject into the ambulance that is waiting outside the barracks parking lot. We're still cutting off the transport to the hospital, taking up the time at the hospital. But for us to say, no, this is where we're going to do it, we need to leave that up to the experts. We did trouble understanding these areas about the transportation in the nose, going through the normal process of someone going through the two judiciary committees. So I just wanted to clarify the question I asked before and you were nodding. So under current law, can you withdraw blood at the reset? No, I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood you. No, there wouldn't be any situation that I'm aware that we'd be drawing blood at roadside. So currently, do you only do it in a hospital setting? Correct. This is seeking to add police and fire departments as safe and clean locations. Correct. But safe and clean locations would also be potentially roadside in an ambulance, would it not? Roadside blood. In an ambulance. And I guess when I think of the word roadside, that is at the time that the stop is initiated, you're only a few minutes into the stop. So my definition of roadside is different. I'm thinking more of a controlled atmosphere apart from a lot of aberrics. That's after those that are qualified to take the blood, they come in, they need a sterile site and it's up to them to decide whether or not, I mean, it's blood-drawn in battlefield. It's blood-drawn anywhere from battlefield to an operating room. That's for an expert to decide where they want to do it as long as the site is sterile. That's for them to decide. Well, how... Bear with it. My daughter is in the process of becoming an EFT. I don't think she's reached the intermediate level of that, which means my naive brain, she's not authorized to stick a needle in somebody's skin. She's on an ambulance crew and goes to a scene and you have an unconscious individual taken from an accident. If I read this correctly, you're able to have the officer request. This is a two-part question. I don't know how your officer is determined whether the individual they are asking actually fit the intermediate level or something about that. That's question number one. Question number two is, if you have somebody who's actually authorized to withdraw the blood, I'm reading this language just saying you can actually do that and back the ambulance as soon as you pull the individual out of a wreck, as soon as the ambulance is determined to be a clean and safe location. Am I misreading something? I'm missing the step of the warrant. In fact, you still need a warrant to draw that blood. And to get that roadside is not practical. You still need to go back and actually type up an affidavit, speak for the state's attorney, get a judge to sign off on it. So we're talking probably several, couple hours into the whole process from the time you're going to stop or the crash. So to draw blood at roadside, I don't see any situation where someone's going to be denied medical care because we need to always quit we're going to draw blood, that's not the case. To the first part of your concern, was that in a way the rescue crews operate is that not everyone on that crew is necessarily trained or qualified per the way the rescue crew operates to be the person with the needle in their hand. So that's where we always default to the experts who are on the ambulance crews who say that their crew that's certified by the state of Vermont and regulated and audited if they're capable of doing it per the crew then that's not for us to say we'll marry the others. The crew says they're good. So you noted that blood is drawn on the battlefield and I think that's true. There are also emergency operations on the battlefield not because you want to do them there but because someone's going to die. Here we have choices about where to properly accomplish these things. My concern here is that there has been talk of electronic warrants being obtained at the roadside with a call to a judicial officer. If I put that together in my mind with these things it seems like there's a one might potentially view this as a relatively large expansion of the ability the locations and the people who can do this which would allow for a substantially larger number of people to have blood drawn in the event that police believe that's necessary with electronic warrants making it easier. Correct something about electronic warrants. When I've talked about speaking of that process I never meant it to be a phone call. I meant it to be an affidavit that maybe I typed out here and sent a copy to the state's attorney and obviously they had better equipment. A copy to the state's attorney after the judicial officer. It's just like getting a search warrant by fax only it could be electronic it could be done at the scene. I've never felt that you could make a phone call to a judge and say give me a you know I might work on law and order on TV but I don't think it matters. I'm just saying. I just want to make it clear that I've never had that incident for a phone call. I guess my point would be there's no difference today between a phone call and a text or a... I think some little... Topper will go through you with what they have to do. My point is that I don't personally want the recreational cannabis market to be accompanied by a broad expansion of police authorities to draw blood or to take oral swabs at the root side and so although in isolation I might look at this differently but it seems to me of a peace with the things that have been coming out of the house particularly house transportation for the last couple of years and my fear is that it's piece one and there are pieces two and three to come. It will all be assembled as a system that will allow the governor to sign the recreational cannabis bill and come in my view at the cost of the system we have now which I am comfortable with but not with the expansions here for blood drawing and oral swabs and potentially electronic swabs. Yeah. That's for you. My address is very reasonable. Go ahead. No, I'm just... I'm just confused I guess. It seems to me that what we're doing is allowing more people to draw blood. Licensed people. Only licensed people at we're saying it has to be at one of these facilities. Currently it can be anywhere or emergency rooms essentially because that's where these people work is at emergency rooms and EMT could be someplace else. Correct. And although that we have the common goal of the safety of patients there's no strong arm here they can show up at a scene and be like this is not happening here and they make the ultimate decision and when it comes to drawing blood we need to fall in line with what they say and if they say this isn't where we're going to do it that's not where we're going to do it. So what I hear is like this erosion of a due process which is an enforcement branch of our government which will be represented the systems that are in place to protect such things are not affected by this and are not attempted to be which is that there's been a roadside process that's meant to a continued custody of somebody who is suspected to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol or a combination brought back to a local police station or a state police barracks where the process is read the person in their consent some request for a lawyer there's a perhaps a refusal there's then a constable state's attorney who then refers to a judicial officer who then reviews via his or her laptop at the house the warrant application grants or denies the point is up until the point of the draw all of this system is still in place to protect such overreaching law enforcement officers I'm sorry does it take you to process a DUI average time that maybe you didn't stop and you're called in as a DRE give us an idea of how long that takes from the perspective of an offender from arrest to release from arrest to a release where the arresting officer is not a DRE the process ranges anywhere from time of arrest to time of release for the offender two to five hours and this seeks to eliminate the back hour hour and a half of that process which is where everything has still occurred but now we have to get blood per warrant and it requires the transport all imagine our homes right where the hospitals are relative to our homes or our police stations so there's the travel time on the road there's the wait time at the hospital then the travel time back to the office so outside that's where there's this range it could be quite like things this really is an attempt to shorten the amount of time it takes to by avoiding the hospital emergency it seems to me it's also the hospital I mean if you've been in a hospital emergency room lately it's hours of wait for people who have screaming children and to have somebody come in there just to have blood drawn if I were the mother of that screaming child I might kick you in the shins I'm running out of time I'm reportedly running out of time Doctor Conti do you have anything to add I think I would just like to speak thank you both very much thank you because are you also doing a DRE I am not you are not I chose to I was a detective for the last eight years for this assignment so I haven't worked this for a long time thank you so for the record I choose Conti I'm director of the Vermont Forensic Laboratory taking the opportunity to speak today I think it's the first time I've been in this committee this year I just like not this year hopefully it was all good oh yeah I'm always happy to come in if there are questions so I think I'd just like to reiterate what's been said by the previous witnesses the intention of this and it's been something that we've been pushing for for years and it really doesn't have anything to do with the current cannabis bill this has been a need to be identified because there is such a time gap between when a stop occurs and when blood is drawn for these cases so anything we can do to shorten that time for detention and also to get a sample that's taken more timely fashion closer to the time of operation as helpful because there is no relation back to take a drug test result to an earlier point in time like there is for alcohol so in addition to that the intention of this is to add in other qualified and licensed folks to be able to draw blood samples and also eliminate the need to go to a hospital I think also just a touch on the sterility standpoint I know it's been said that it was drawn outfields but I think everybody's also familiar with the Red Cross setting up shop kind of wherever they do for blood draws that could be in a library or a movie theater so again it's up to those people that are drawing blood to make the site of collection sterile and adequate we have people come into the lab when we need blood for our research purposes I have an EMT colleague that will come in and draw blood in our lab for us when we need that and I think wherever you go you're going to run into people that are better than others that are drawing blood and we all have horror stories where they couldn't find a vein or end up with bruises inside a grapefruit the next day so I think you're going to find that when you're asking for someone to come in it's probably going to be people that are very proficient at their job coming in to do this like the person that I have that comes in he is an EMT paramedic that works for the critical transport team at UVM MNZ he's very good so I think allowing broadening the horizon of people that can come in to do this is definitely helpful for many regards there are two articles in your pack one of them is supposed to be in this package the one is from the Boston Globe about the illegal market in Massachusetts for marijuana the other is I found very interesting from yesterday's Boston Globe and it's about a breath test for detecting POT and the people in Oakland, California are working on that so we knew that it's just a matter of time till somebody gets rich developing a test yeah I know and pepper or do you have any comments on this no I guess not I mean James pepper department of state series and I think what's important just to take from this conversation is we're not trying to erode the probable cause it's the basis of the warrant to get the blood the only thing that this bill does is try and shorten that time from the time we receive the warrant or the law enforcement receives the warrant to the time the blood is actually drawn which is important to just highlight that point I was here to monitor two things one is that nobody would fiddle with the warrant requirement and two to make sure that law enforcement wasn't authorized even if they were trained to draw the blood so those two things not being there I'm satisfied but we'll see what happens on the road can you compare an amendment that does I think we've all talked about and then committee can look at it tomorrow morning and decide whether we want to support it or the number of they want to reject it but that's something so where would that be put right now on it's over here right now it's in senate appropriate it's right now I believe it's still in senate I think we voted on it senate oh and then it's coming to appropriations okay so it hasn't even arrived so there is time to so I need to end the committee because it's afternoon