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from the I'm-positive-there-are-false-positives dept.
Pro Publica and The New York Times Magazine have each written about field drug testing by U.S. law enforcement agencies. The tests are undertaken with disposable kits containing chemicals. A sample is brought into contact with the chemicals and there may be a colour change, which is assessed by the officer. The essay tells the story of people against whom criminal charges regarding illegal drugs were filed, with the results of these field testing kits as the primary evidence in the prosecutions.
According to the essay, the use of the kits has various pitfalls which can lead to false positive results. For one thing, analytes which are legal to possess can produce the same colour change as illegal substances. For another, poor lighting which may be encountered in the field can distort the officer's perception of colours. Confirmation bias can occur. Also, officers may receive inadequate (or--the submitter supposes--incorrect) training in the interpretation of the colours. A former Houston police chief offered the opinion that
Officers shouldn't collect and test their own evidence, period. I don't care whether that's cocaine, blood, hair.
The essay mentions gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), an instrumental method which is typically undertaken in a laboratory, as providing more reliable results. The submitter notes that portable GC-MS equipment does exist (1, 2).
Nationwide, 62 percent of forensics labs do not conduct further testing in cases in which a field drug test was used and the defendant made a guilty plea. However, the Houston crime laboratory has been doing such testing. They have found that false positives are commonplace. The district attorney's office for Harris County, Texas, which handles cases from Houston, has been informed about those test results and is undertaking "efforts to overturn wrongful convictions." In three years, about as many such convictions have been overturned in Harris County as in the rest of the United States.
Referenced stories:
(Score: 3, Informative) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:25PM
The way it goes down is this: The police get a false positive on the test, then (at least in my state), they take everything you own via civil asset forfeiture, thus making it impossible for you to afford a lawyer. You're given a choice to plea guilty for a lesser punishment (which allows the cops and the prosecuting attorney to look good), or you go to prison for a harsher punishment.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:46PM
Out of curiosity, which state are you talking about, so I can avoid living there?
Also, is that for everybody, or just racial and religious minorities? In a lot of jurisdictions, WASPs are exempt from this sort of treatment.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:51PM
Every state except New Mexico and Montana has some degree of civil asset forfeiture abuse. New Mexico prohibits it, and Montana prohibits it unless a criminal conviction has already been obtained. The situation described does seem unusual, though; in most cases, the seizure is limited to what you have with you. There are exceptions, of course; the IRS uses civil forfeiture against bank accounts and financial assets in tax cases, and it's possible for a house to be seized if it was used for a drug operation, but it's much harder to trump these charges up, compared to a traffic stop, for instance.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Friday July 29 2016, @04:11PM
This is Oklahoma, where the highway patrol is using card scanning devices to take away assets when they stop you. They are getting a huge discount on the equipment via a deal they made with the vendor to give them a percentage of the take. So far it is limited only to certain cards, but they tried to get the ability to scan and take assets via bank cards.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/06/17/oklahomas-use-card-readers-to-freeze-seize-funds-comes-under-fire.html [foxnews.com]