I am starting this petition because I am sick to my stomach to read a news article which reports on three different individuals all arrested because the Cobb Country Police Officer,s who are trained as Drug Recognition Experts, "thought" they were under the influence of drugs. All three of these individuals were cleared as the scientific tests showed that they had zero of these drugs present in their system that the Drug Recognition Experts "detected". Their cases were dismissed, according to the article.

Please read the full story here and make up your own mind if this sounds like any type of justice to you. http://www.11alive.com/news/investigations/the-drug-whisperer/437061710 & http://www.khou.com/news/nation-now/the-drug-whisperer-drivers-arrested-while-stone-cold-sober/439206628

The good people of Cobb Country, GA are being treated as if they have no rights and no due process as they are being arrested without much of any evidence other than "I think...." by the Cobb Country Police Officers who are trained as Drug Recognition Experts.

What makes me even sicker is to read the audacity of the commanders in charge of the department to doubled-down on their assertion that the drug recognition expert is better at detecting marijuana in a driver than scientific tests.

Really.....we're going to go on a bias and skewed human opinion based on some training rather than a scientific and chemical test....does this sound like a fair and equitable process?

I am not suggesting that these experts are not good, that they are not needed, that they have no place and that the training is not good, BUT we need to have a better way of actually identifying if these folks are under the influence of drugs other than an "I think....". These arrests are ruing peoples lives, they are forcing folks to loose jobs and careers while forcing these same accused individuals to spend thousands of dollars on the lawyers that they can't afford to defend themselves for something they did not do. Again, this is not about the officers or their training but improving the process and the confirmation before we go down the road of an arrest.

As we all know there is two sides to every story and I am not defending any of these individuals arrested for any of their actions but simply saying things do not add up on how anybody can say a human is better than a chemical test.

We have alcohol tests that can be conducted on site or even at the stations, why can we not deploy any type of scientific tests (rather than a human's observation) as a last and very early preliminary chemical confirmation, on site, that a person is under the influence of those drugs that were being detected by the expert.. Why do we have to have people spend thousands of dollars to defend themselves if there is no scientific proof (such as a breathalyzer test) that a person is actually under the influence.

Please, please, sign this petition to if nothing else get an attention of the Cobb Country Police Department and reevaluate their process and the "double-down" theory that a person's observations are better than a chemical test.

The Cobb Country Elected officials, email and/or call, some or all of them.

Haris Velic