{"id":67684,"date":"2025-12-11T10:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T10:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/67684\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T10:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T10:39:10","slug":"suffolk-da-ray-tierney-at-manhattan-symposium-aims-for-crack-down-on-drugged-drivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/67684\/","title":{"rendered":"Suffolk DA Ray Tierney, at Manhattan symposium, aims for crack down on drugged drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago, the National Transportation Safety Board <\/a>recommended\u00a0New York join most of the rest of the country by closing a gap in state law\u00a0that advocates say permits drugged drivers <\/a>to walk free. At a Manhattan symposium Wednesday, prosecutors and state lawmakers said\u00a02026 could be the year.<\/p>\n

New York<\/a> is one of just four states \u2013 the others are Alaska, Florida and Massachusetts \u2013 to require law enforcement to name the drug and for it to be on a statutorily established list of controlled substances before they can charge someone with driving under the influence.<\/p>\n

While alcohol remains the leading cause of impaired driving, drugged driving is a growing threat, according to the NTSB. State data showed\u00a0about a quarter of Long Island\u2019s fatal crashes had a \u201cdrug-involved driver\u2019 in 2023. Authorities on the Island and across New York have called the state\u2019s current approach unwieldy as law enforcement officers encounter drivers under the influence of synthetic drugs like bromazolam, xylazine and propofol, along with hundreds of more obscure varieties that are created every year.<\/p>\n

Proposed legislation<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have synthetic drugs, created in labs, continually being changed and peddled on our streets,\u201d Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney told those gathered\u00a0for the\u00a0symposium at Touro University\u2019s <\/a>Times Square campus, including families of people killed in crashes with drugged\u00a0drivers.<\/p>\n

A bill now in the state legislature, introduced last March but amended this week, would expand the legal basis of intoxication from alcohol to other drugs, including those not on the state list or those not able to be identified.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of new drugs are created every year, Tierney said. \u201cThere is no list that could hope to keep up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed legislation\u00a0would update state law on field testing for drugged driving to include the use of tests that screen for multiple types of drugs and make refusal to take a test a traffic infraction. It would expand the cases where a court can order chemical testing, currently limited to crashes that result in death or serious injury. It would also update law to allow license suspensions for some drivers charged with drugged driving pending prosecution.<\/p>\n

Earlier versions of the bill failed to pass in the 2021-2022 and 2023-2024 legislative sessions.<\/p>\n

Tierney said the current version, sponsored by\u00a0state Sen. Christopher Ryan<\/a>, a Democrat, who represents a district outside Syracuse, includes\u00a0\u201csafeguards\u201d that could ease passage this time. They include an exception to the bill for drivers having a medical emergency or allergic reaction and a provision requiring collection of data on the number of stops, arrests and convictions made under the bill, along with demographic data, which\u00a0Tierney said, would be analyzed to determine whether minority motorists are subject to an inordinate number of traffic stops.<\/p>\n

The bill also includes a five-year sunset clause, which Tierney said would give lawmakers an opportunity to review its effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Family loss<\/p>\n

Among those at the symposium were\u00a0Andrea Carpenter and Timothy Carpenter of Centereach. Their son, Timothy, 22,\u00a0was killed in 2023 by a driver who was high on fentanyl. The driver was arrested and later died of a drug overdose<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Timothy Carpenter said that the current requirement for law enforcement to identify the specific drug impairing a driver made no sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re drunk, you\u2019re drunk,” Carpenter said. “If you\u2019re high, you\u2019re high.”<\/p>\n

In an interview, Assemb. Steve Stern (D-Huntington), a bill co-sponsor, said more legislators would sign on as they familiarized themselves with the type of drug testing used in enforcing the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey still believe that the technology has not kept pace, but that\u2019s no longer true,\u201d Stern said, calling\u00a0New York\u2019s current system \u201cantiquated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe technology is there,” he added.\u00a0“We can prove \u2018under the influence\u2019 by a requisite level of proof, and it\u2019s being done by just about (all)\u00a0the rest of the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A spokesperson\u00a0for Gov Kathy Hochul said she would review the bill if it passes both houses of the legislature. In January, as part of a package of proposals to strengthen the state\u2019s criminal justice system, Hochul said she would propose legislation also aimed at combatting drugged driving.<\/p>\n

At Wednesday\u2019s event, Empress and Terrance Henderson of Massapequa held a picture of their son, Xavier Parris, 26, killed in 2022<\/a>. He was a passenger in a car with a drunken driver who hit speeds\u00a0as fast as 97 mph\u00a0 before smashing into a tree. The couple came to the event, said Empress Henderson, \u201cbecause of the devastation. We could not just sit back and not join.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen McDermott, of Smithtown, came to honor his brother Michael McDermott, 37, a Kings Park gym teacher<\/a> and coach killed in 2019 by a driver, speeding and high on fentanyl, who left the scene. Had the proposed law been in force at the time, Stephen McDermott said, that man would have been \u201cbehind bars,\u201d not driving, \u201cand my brother could have been saved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Carpenters said they had participated in a number of events like Wednesday\u2019s. Each event churns up bad memories. \u201cEverything was taken from us,\u201d Timothy Carpenter said. \u201cHe was our only son.\u201d They keep going\u00a0to the events because \u201cwe don\u2019t want anyone to go through what we are going through today,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand how these lawmakers can\u2019t get it together and pass the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nicholas<\/p>\n

\n\tNicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended\u00a0New York join most of the rest of the country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[23403,4275,75,84,83,8015,9,24,63,8018,8016,608],"class_list":["post-67684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-dangerous-roads","tag-local-politics","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-nassau","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-roads","tag-suffolk","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}