Police continue to seek info on rumored drink tampering on Capitol Hill

It’s been more than a month since members of Capitol Hill’s nightlife community reached out to police about a possible increase in drugged drinks at bars. But police are still short on hard data confirming whether the druggings are taking place, and at which bars.

“We don’t have a lot of reports,” East Precinct Captain Paul McDonagh said at an Aug. 25 meeting of the East Precinct Police Advisory Council. “Part of that is the stigma … that surrounds being a victim of this sort of crime. But just because we don’t have active reports doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

Law enforcement and the community at large have spent the past month scratching their heads over how to handle a possible rash of drinks contaminated by drugs like GHB or Rohypnol, known to cause sudden extreme intoxication and loss of consciousness when combined with alcohol. Because the effects of such drugs rob their victims of the ability to consent, they are often associated with sexual assaults and are commonly known as “date rape drugs.”

However, Police Advisory Council Chair Troy Meyers noted that few of the stories he had heard from self-reported victims had involved sexual assault.

“The thing that surprises me this time around is there’s less talk about it being a sex predator thing and more about it being a means of taking advantage of people in general,” he said.

Informal reports of drugged drinks have circulated in the community, and circulated wider as they’ve been reported in the media. 

But a lack of police reports have left a vacuum of information, instead filled by questions. Where are the druggings occurring? How many people may have been drugged? What’s the motivation behind them? Is this the work of one person? Or is it a case of neighborhood population growth bringing in a proportionally greater number of bad seeds?

Are these druggings even happening at all?

“If it’s an unsubstantiated fear, we should still talk about it,” Meyers said. “And if it’s a substantial fear, then we definitely need to talk about it and figure out what can be done.”

Ian Carey, the co-owner and bar manager of Bar Sue on 14th Avenue, is among those in the night life community who say they are on the front lines of a neighborhood epidemic.

“This is a real thing that has happened,” Carey said. “This has actually happened to me and multiple friends.”

Carey was out with friends three months ago when he was drugged, he said. One moment he was drinking and having fun, the next he almost completely lost his sense of orientation, as if he had become extremely drunk in a matter of seconds. As soon as he realized he was losing his faculties, he called an Uber and had the driver rush him home, he said.

Carey has since begun offering free drug testing cards at Bar Sue. None of the tests, which consist of a strip that changes color when exposed to GHB, have come up positive as of Aug. 25, he said.

Carey and McDonagh agreed that drink tampering is a difficult crime to combat. 

Date rape drugs commonly disappear from a victim’s system in a day’s time, McDonagh said. Yet many people who have experienced sudden inexplicable intoxication may not realize or accept that they’ve been drugged for several days, Carey said.

As a result, it’s hard for police to get medical confirmation a victim has been drugged.

Ideally, victims would be tested at an emergency room immediately after coming out of a suspicious blackout, McDonagh said. But even if victims reported the crime well after the fact, police could obtain a better idea of where to focus officers’ efforts.

“We want to make it as difficult as possible for these predators to operate,” he said.