The Boone County Sheriff’s Office began random drug testing of all it's employees, with the Sheriff as the first to be tested.

For about 15 years Boone County Sheriff Rodney A. Miller has advocated random drug testing of employees of the Sheriff's Office, but was unable to get the funding to perform drug testing.

“With the cooperation of the Boone County Commission in providing the funding, the Sheriff's Office began to implement a new policy which selects employees to submit to drug and alcohol screening randomly, at various times,” Sheriff Miller said.

A complete new policy was developed and presented, just before Sheriff Miller subjected himself to the drug screening.

“The policy states that employees are in positions of high public trust; therefore in the public's best interest and for the safety of everyone, employees should be tested,” he explained. “This means all law enforcement, protective service, tax office and civilians are subject to drug screenings.”

"I do not believe that we have anyone in the Sheriff's Office that has a problem, but being in service to the public, being paid by public funds, we believe that we need to lead by example,” Sheriff Miller added. "With all that has been publicized about drug screening of public employees, we owe it to them to show that we are doing the right thing."

The Sheriff's Office has mandated drug testing of all new employees for many years as a part of the pre-employment examination, Miller said, but this makes the testing as a condition of continued employment.

“Each employee of the Sheriff's Office will be receiving a copy of the new policy over the next few weeks, with instruction of how the system will work,” he said.

Boggs and Associates have been retained by Boone County to make selections and perform the testing, on site of employees who are drawn from the list for screening. They administered the test to Sheriff Miller, which reported negative results. According to Sheriff Miller, "I'm not going to ask the people who work in my Office to do anything I'm not willing to do, so I was the first."

The new policy becomes effective at the start of the new year for employees.