SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the sometimes-stereotypes-are-inaccurate dept.
AlterNet reports:
A 64-year-old man in Orlando was handcuffed, arrested, strip searched, and spent hours in jail after officers mistook the glaze from his doughnut for crystal meth.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that, after pulling Daniel Rushing over for failure to stop and speeding, Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins noticed "a rock like substance" on the floorboard of the car. "I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic", she wrote in her report.
The officers asked if they could search Rushing's vehicle and he agreed. [...] [Rushing said] "They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, 'No, it's meth, crystal meth'."
[...] The officers conducted two roadside drug tests on the particles and both came back positive for an illegal substance. A state crime lab made further tests weeks later and cleared him. Rushing says he was locked up for about 10 hours before his release on $2,500 bond.
A cop who can't identify doughnut residue? What is the world coming to?
Previous: Are Questionable Drug Tests Filling U.S. Prisons?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Michelle on Friday July 29 2016, @07:09PM
What is the nature of these "roadside tests" - TWO of them - that determined it to be some sort of illegal narcotic? How many people have been wrongfully locked up in our for-profit prison system based on similar "roadside tests" that weren't cleared later on? I wonder if this person will be compensated for his wrongful imprisonment? Yes, our draconian drug laws ARE being used to fill our profit-driven prisons. Hope he sues and taxpayers have to shell out even more money due to overzealous cops. I wonder if the cop, with their "eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer" will be penalized? Haha not gonna happen, of course.
"Right now is the only moment you'll ever have; so why be miserable?"
(Score: 2, Disagree) by PocketSizeSUn on Friday July 29 2016, @07:30PM
If the road side test kit was accurate more cops would be doping the samples that they are send to the crime lab, which is worse.
Lesser of two evils. Let the cops have their fun and hope the courts will clean up the mess.
Fits the agenda too. People with money know enough to *never* allow a public defender to defend them ... so we keep locking up poor people and dumb people and make the ignorant middle class foot the bill.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday July 29 2016, @07:31PM
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 29 2016, @08:47PM
He will be compensated by the court system in accordance with his ability to use the court system.
In other words: he ain't got the money to pay a lawyer to sue their asses to kingdom come, so, unless he gets really lucky, he gets nothing.
Now, if he had $200K sitting in the bank with nothing to do, a lawsuit would be a pretty good bet, could probably return at least 3:1 on the investment.
🌻🌻 [google.com]