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Another reason NOT to go to Florida:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth
Florida Man Awarded $37,500 After Cops Mistake Glazed Doughnut Crumbs For Meth
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...-cops-mistake-glazed-doughnut-crumbs-for-meth
Florida Man Awarded $37,500 After Cops Mistake Glazed Doughnut Crumbs For Meth
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- LAUREL WAMSLEY
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A Krispy Kreme doughnut was to blame for a white substance that led to an Orlando man being jailed on drug charges. Results from roadside drug test kits conducted by law enforcement officers can be unreliable.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
It sounds like a joke, but, well — keep reading.
In December 2015, 64-year-old Daniel Rushing had just dropped off a friend at chemotherapy, and was driving home an older woman from his church who worked at the 7-Eleven and would otherwise walk the two miles home.
As Rushing drove away from the convenience store, police pulled him over. The officer said he'd been driving 42 miles an hour in a 30 zone, and had failed to come to a complete stop before entering the roadway. As he handed over his driver's license, Officer Shelby Riggs-Hopkins noticed his concealed weapons permit. Rushing confirmed he had a pistol, and she asked him to step out of the car for her safety.
The officer then asked if police could search his car, and Rushing said sure — if it meant he wouldn't be ticketed. Rushing watched as the officers, who now numbered four, conducted a very thorough inspection of his car.
Finally, Riggs-Hopkins said to him, "You want to tell me about what we found?"
"There's nothing to find," he said, confused.
not a controlled substance. (Results did not indicate whether the substance was sweet and delicious.)
All charges against Rushing were dropped.
It would be a funnier story if it wasn't so closely replicated in Oviedo, a Florida city northeast of Orlando.
Karlos Cashe was pulled over in March for driving without headlights, and arrested by Oviedo police when court records showed that he was out past his court-ordered curfew. Those records were later shown to be out-of-date and inaccurate, ABC affiliate WFTV reported.
Police saw white dust on the floorboards of Cashe's car and tested it with a field kit. The substance showed positive for cocaine.
Cashe went to jail for 90 days – 90 days in which he knew that the white substance in his car was simply drywall dust.
"I know for a fact it's drywall because I'm a handyman," Cashe told WFTV. "I said that continuously during the arrest stop."
Police in Orlando and Oviedo, like many other law enforcement agencies, use inexpensive field kits to test for drugs. Orlando's police use NIK brand narcotic testing kits. A NIK general screening kit, which tests for opiates, meth and other drugs, costs just $18 for a box of ten.
But such roadside test kits are far from fool-proof.
A 2016 investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times found that tens of thousands of people are sent to jail each year based on the kits' results, which often generate false positives:
"Some tests ... use a single tube of a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate, which turns blue when it is exposed to cocaine. But cobalt thiocyanate also turns blue when it is exposed to more than 80 other compounds, including methadone, certain acne medications and several common household cleaners. Other tests use three tubes, which the officer can break in a specific order to rule out everything but the drug in question — but if the officer breaks the tubes in the wrong order, that, too, can invalidate the results. The environment can also present problems. Cold weather slows the color development; heat speeds it up, or sometimes prevents a color reaction from taking place at all."
Data from the state law enforcement lab in Florida found that 21 percent of the evidence recorded by police as methamphetamine was not in fact methamphetamine, and of those, half weren't illegal drugs at all, according to the ProPublica investigation: "When we examined the department's records, they showed that officers, faced with somewhat ambiguous directions on the pouches, had simply misunderstood which colors indicated a positive result."
Those findings are part of what spurred Rushing to file a lawsuit against the city of Orlando after the charges against him were dropped. Two weeks ago, Rushing says he reached a settlement with the city for $37,500.
"I thought [the lawsuit] was the right thing to do, for what they did to me," he tells NPR.
An Orlando police spokeswoman says that after the Rushing incident, the department conducted an internal investigation and officers received additional training on using the field kits — but it's still using the same NIK narcotic test kits.
The Safariland Group, which makes the NIK tests, told ProPublica that it provides all law enforcement agencies with comprehensive field test training manuals, in addition to its instructions, and says its products are not intended for use other than directed.
"These training materials, which outline protocols for use, clearly state that the tests are presumptive aids that serve only as confirmation of probable cause and are not a substitute for laboratory testing," the company wrote in a statement.
For his part, Rushing bears no ill will toward the city's police department, and says that the arresting officer was "very polite and nice." He worked alongside the police as a parks department employee for more than 25 years, and his brother is a former Orlando cop.
He says the issue is that the department keeps using the kits, despite the well-documented problems with using them.
"These kits give a false positive one out of every five times," he says. "I'm thinking about running for statehouse next year. And if I do, I'd like to get something done about these kits."
With the lawsuit behind him, Rushing's next step is getting his record expunged. He says he'd like to find more work in security — but it's been hard to get business with a record showing an arrest for possession of meth while armed.
After the glaze incident, Rushing stopped by his local Krispy Kreme to let them know they might be in for a little publicity.
Sometimes they give him a doughnut for free.
"But I don't eat them in the car," he says, laughing.
