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:
Related Stories
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?
The Free Thought Project reports
After years of injustice, thousands of people wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have their convictions overturned. The ruling centers on drug lab tests that were falsified by a state-employed chemist named Annie Dookhan.
"The state's highest court on Wednesday [January 18] ordered prosecutors to drop a large portion of the more than 24,000 drug convictions affected by the misconduct of former state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, issuing an urgent call to resolve a scandal that has plagued the legal system since 2012."
Dookhan was imprisoned in 2013 after being charged with a suite of crimes relating to her years-long career of deceit, where she falsified tens of thousands of reports to jail innocent people. She would mark results as "positive" for illegal substances without actually testing them, even adding cocaine to samples when no cocaine was present.
At [Dookhan's] sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball stated, "Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core."
[...] The Massachusetts high court ruled that each [of 24,391 defendants] had a right to a hearing, but the cost and logistics of doing so would be unfeasible.
"The court said district attorneys across the state must "exercise their prosecutorial discretion and reduce the number of relevant Dookhan defendants by moving to vacate and dismiss with prejudice all drug cases the district attorneys would not or could not reprosecute if a new trial were ordered." The cases affected by the ruling include people who pleaded guilty, were convicted, or admitted that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them. By vacating the cases, the convictions would effectively be erased...
The court said defendants whose cases aren't dismissed should receive a notice that their cases had been affected by Dookhan's misconduct. Then, any indigent defendants would receive public counsel to explore requests to vacate their pleas or get new trials.
Related: Are Questionable Drug Tests Filling U.S. Prisons?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:29PM
If I tested positive, I'd do what any reasonable innocent person would do: 1) GET A LAWYER. 2) GET A SECOND OPINION myself as the lawyer advises (which I'd guess is have my physician order a more reliable retest.) 3) Shove those results back in the face of the prosecutor and have charges dropped.
But drug testing on hair, if I recall correctly, can go back for several months on some substances. So I wonder how many of those that false positived on the first test decided to take a plea because they knew that they'd not pass a longer period retest, false positive or no.
Jails and prisons are absolutely full of innocent people. Just ask them and they'll tell you. (So how do you separate the actually innocent out... hmm..... sccccience?)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:32PM
for #1 you need money
for #2 you need more money
for #3 they ignore you
Prison! for you!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:45PM
Annnnd really doesn't solve shit. You are still apprehended. You still have a record of arrest, which gets you bonus TLC from police. You can still be held even when the manufacturer of a product testifies on your behalf.
http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2007/apr/17/punk_rockers_drug_test_false_pos [stopthedrugwar.org]
I'm impressed by how many people here apparently have had little engagement with law enforcement. Over 90% of federal cases are pleaded out, and there's a reason for that. It's not because the feds are incredible sleuths at ferreting out the guilty.
Now a class action lawsuit against the manufacturers of these field tests, that might actually bring about some real change.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:59PM
How rarely do people wash their hands if a field-test for GHB (Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate) that gives a false-positive on soaps is considered remotely useful?
Or is this a case of the user not reading the direction explaining common false-positives?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:22PM
That's not how it works. As others point out, you'll need a pile of money. That may be OK for you, but for most even where it's possible, they can ill afford that and will have been effectively punished for nothing. Others simply can't afford it.
Meanwhile, the police have that magic color change test (nice and visual for the court), and you have your good word. The DA has explained that you could be looking at 10 years unless you confess, then you'll be out in a few months. Throw in some well justified distrust of the justice system and there you go.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by number6x on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:58PM
That is why asset seizure laws are so popular in connection with drug arrests. Thanks to the complete disregard for the 4th and 5th amendments, your assets can be seized and you must cooperate in their seizure (by volunteering passwords and fingerprints).
That way you will not have a pile of money to fight any false positives.
Besides, in America, we put our trust in god. It says so right on that pile of money that you just lost. if you weren't a drug dealing narco-terrorist, god would have protected you from any false positives. So you are obviously not christian enough to pray in the right way, or are some kind of atheist socialist who deserves to be locked up any way.
Don't try to confuse us with all of this false positive chemistry science-y mumbo jumbo. Then, when you want to get early release, join the correct religious group in prison and you can get time shaved off your sentence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @08:52PM
Nobody cares if you've used. They're testing substances in your car or on your person.
Soap can test as cocaine. Yes, you read that right. And if it doesn't, the officers can just say it's positive. http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-pa-cocaine-soap-mix-up-arrest-20160113-story.html [mcall.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:30PM
Guilty is guilty. All confessions are final. Go directly to prison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:36PM
Then why did you pick the banana peel of damaging nights?
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:00PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:41PM
I really don't have a problem with the tests themselves, inaccurate or not. The limitations of the tests are well-known. They are probably still more accurate than drug-sniffing dogs (while dogs have a phenomenal sense of smell, they react more to what their handler wants them to do, than to what they are supposed to be smelling for), and certainly more accurate than the so-called "reasonable suspicion" that leads police to stop people for any or no reason, frequently escalating to all manner of police misbehavior, and are more accurate than polygraph tests as well (which are only one step up from phrenology, more like a carnival trick than an actual investigative tool).
These tests are not admitted as evidence in court. They are used for investigative purposes by the police. If the field test's results are incorrect, this should be detected in follow-up analysis by the forensic lab, or the defendant's opportunity to have the evidence tested by their own laboratory, or simply to testify in court about the truth. In fact, police forensic labs are often also inaccurate, which is why it is important for the defendants to challenge the evidence themselves. The problem is that all this costs time and money, money which the victims of these guilt-by-assertion shakedowns usually don't have, and time which they frequently can't come up with given the pressure of the situation.
But our criminal "justice" system is excellent at extracting guilty pleas from most of these people, even if they are innocent. Although police and prosecutors have an ethical obligation to abandon prosecution of people who are not believed guilty, this is sacrificed on the altar of quick and rapid convictions, "justified" by the belief that they were probably guilty of something. The threat of prosecution, and the defendant's lack of knowledge of their rights and lack of an attorney during preliminary proceedings, is enough to convince many people to plead guilty, even if they aren't. That is really where the problem lies.
So no, it's not the tests. It's the rampant corruption and racism of the system that leads to the abuse of the tests. And it's the War On Some Drugs, more accurately termed the War On Minorities or the War On Civil Liberties, which forces the police and courts into assembly-line manufactured guilt rather than the pursuit of actual crimes and criminals.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 26 2016, @01:48PM
Part of the problem is the public, and a system of elected judges that is absolutely unique and makes very little sense. In almost everywhere else in the world, the whole point is for judges in particular to *not* be accountable to the public so that they can be more impartial and not as swayed by public opinion. The most common alternatives are either appointment (like the US federal courts) or in a few cases a civil service based on coursework and examinations.
The problem is that approximately zero judges campaign on a platform of "I will make sure that defendants are treated fairly in my jurisdiction. It is better than 1000 guilty men go free than 1 innocent person sent to jail." Instead it's either "I'm tough on crime" or "The other guy is soft on crime". This is what they've decided the electorate wants in their judges, which leads directly to judges being slanted in favor of prosecutors.
The prosecutors, for their part, are subject to the exact same electoral pressures, and also the pressure of keeping the cops happy so they give the prosecutors good evidence in their cases, so they will do whatever they have to in order to win cases regardless of whether the defendants are guilty or innocent. Part of their tactics is putting defendants in a position where a guilty plea is cheaper (at least in the short term) than attempting to win their case. For example, if the plea-bargained fine is lower than the percentage that would end up going to a bail bondsman (which a defendant loses whether or not they show up in court), then most defendants will opt for the fine and the criminal record even if they aren't guilty, because it's cheaper.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:06PM
Um I though to point of posting a bond is that you lose it if you don't comply with the terms.
If you lose the bond either way, what is the point of complying with the terms? (besides avoiding contempt of court)
If I want to sell things door-to-door were I live, I am required to post a $10,000 bond in case I refuse to give refunds as required by law.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:25PM
You get your bail back (which goes back to the bail bondsman), but the bondsman charges a fee and you don't get the fee back. The fee is pretty high, because sometimes people skip bail, and then the bail bondsman is the one who is out the money. Bail bondsmen are up there with payday loans in terms of the fee racket they have, but I'm not putting this on them, they provide a needed service at market rates. (The problem is with the system that creates the need for that service).
If you have enough money to post bond in cash... well, the police will seize it from you, so none of that. If you are rich, of course, you can have your attorney have your bank wire the money, and be out the same day, but rich people don't get arrested for trumped-up drug possession charges anyway.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:54AM
Bail bonds are just another scam conducted on the underprivileged in the USA.
As stated above, the bond may cost a fee of some 10% of the bail amount, but if you go missing, the bond company may only have to actually pay 5%. Yes, even if you skip bail the bond company makes a profit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:41PM
It's not that you don't get the bond back.
It's that in order to pay the bond, if you don't actually have the money on hand, you have to go to a bail bondsman, and the bondsman gets to keep a fee, typically around 10%. So, if you are an innocent person without a lot of savings caught up in the criminal "justice" system, you might be presented with the following options:
A. Plead guilty to a lesser charge and pay a $750 fine.
B. Leave on bail, which they tell you will be $10,000, so to fight your case will cost you $1000 to the bondsman, and then possibly have to pay a $1500 fine for the original charge if found guilty. Oh, and your public defender won't really be able to help you, so put in $200 an hour for a lawyer on top of that if you want to have a chance.
C. Sit in jail waiting for trial, which can be weeks or months, meanwhile losing your job and everything you own.
Is it any surprise that many innocent people, faced with this choice, will choose option A? Even though that will give them a criminal record for the rest of their life, which will allow completely legal discrimination against them in jobs, housing, loans, and so forth?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:41PM
My understanding of bail bond is that you would get the money back from the government. But most people need to go through bail bondsman (i.e. basically take a loan). The fee for the bail bondsman is usually some percentage of the bond (10%?). What the GP was saying is you wouldn't get that back. For example plead guilty, get probation and a 8k fine; or go to court, but have to pay a 100k (~10k to a bondsman) bond to stay out of jail until the trial, and then maybe not win the trial.
If you have enough money for a bond, then it's not as big of a deal to go to trial. But the vast majority of people (probably >90%) are not going to have that kind of money. The plea bargaining system is not only inherently unfair, and even farther from justice than actual trials are, but it also heavily favors the wealthy. And by being heavily stacked against the poor, it will also punish minorities disproportionately.
I haven't looked at the stats, but my guess would be that people who have the money for a cash bond payment and good lawyers, are much less likely to get charged, period. The DA's really do not want to go to trial and if they have less leverage are more likely to let it go.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:00PM
It's a bit of a dirty sleight of hand. The BOND is refunded once you show in court for your trial as required. The catch is that the bond is set well above what most people can come up with, so you must go to a bail bondsman. He will post the bond, but he will charge you 10% which is non-refundable. If you skip, he will put a bounty on you with a significant reward and you will be hunted down and dragged back so he can get his bond returned..
So if you as an innocent person get arrested for suspicion of trafficking cocaine because a $2 test was used that can't tell the difference between that and OTC cold medicine and the judge says the bond is $100,000 (since you had a whole box of 'narcotics'), you get to either spend a month or 6 rotting while your job and house goes away or you get to be out $10,000 even when the definitive test eventually (read weeks to months later) comes back saying it's cold medicine.
That assumes you HAVE a spare $10K sitting around (many middle class families DON'T). Or perhaps that $2 test costs your kid a college education.
The 'fine' people running the justice system apparently see no problem whatsoever with any of this!
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday July 26 2016, @07:34PM
Bond is used in different ways! Yes, the $10,000 bond that you post for selling door-to-door is like you described (although, it's more likely there to pay the sales tax if you skip out, and limited to that).
In getting out of jail, there are three primary ways (any of which can be augmented, e.g. with ankle monitoring). You can be released for free, on the theory that you'll come back. You can be released for bail. That's like the "bond" you described, you get it back when you show up (or someone else gets it back)*. Or, you can post bond. In that case, a third party (bailbondsman) posts the bail on your behalf. You give him a % (usually around 10%). He gets his money back if/when you show. You get out of jail. That 10% is the cost of the service. If you don't show, typically the bailbondsman can get his money back if he delivers you to the court in a time period, say 90 days. To do that, he'll hire a bounty hunter. Because, while he'll lose money on you, he'll lose less than the huge loss of you not showing.
*DANGER: If the court finds you owe money, they will totally take it out of the bail before they return it to you. This makes sense, why return money just to ask for it back. But that means the odds of getting on a payment plan for any money covered by your bail are about zip.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:57AM
Actually, in many cases, this isn't true. In many cases, the bond company only forfeits 5-10% of the bail amount, so it's not worth hiring a bounty hunter. The bond company made a profit anyway. It's a scam.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:57PM
Citation need.
Because that would seem totally at odds with, well, a lot.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:42PM
Not every US state elects their judges, it seems to be more common in western states. Only the state-wide attorney general and district attorneys here are elected, and unless you do something big they take no notice of your case. The soulless assistant district attorneys handle everything else, pushing papers and threatening jail the same way your cable company will send you into collections for non-payment.
If you're looking for a problem, it is that judges have banned the mention of jury nullification. This disallows citizens from considering if the law is just, if the defendant has been selectively prosecuted, and if the minimum sentences are proportional to the crimes. Judges have improperly limited juries to finding guilt or innocence, effectively preventing those defenses. That's how people end up in cages for victimless crimes.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 26 2016, @08:29PM
Jury nullification isn't a real solution to the problem of an unjust law or unjust legal system.
The reason is that jury nullification only works for defendants at least 1 juror likes personally. Which can be a problem if you're in the Bible Belt with an all-white all-conservative-Christian jury, and you're a gay black Satanist (or the other way around in Castro, for that matter). If nearly everybody can get busted for dope, whether or not they actually have any, but only some people are going to jail for it, then effectively what you've made illegal is not having dope but being a gay black Satanist in the Bible Belt.
And the flip side is also a problem: If juries are routinely nullifying, then defendants at least 1 juror likes can now commit crimes with impunity. This problem isn't theoretical, either, as the families of people who were lynched back in the day can tell you all about.
The real solution to the problem, of course, is to repeal the laws that you'd rather like to engage in jury nullification to make unenforceable. The good news is that the Overton Window (the range of ideas that are not considered political suicide) regarding victimless crimes is shifting significantly. To give you an idea of how significant, Bernie Sanders did very well for himself this election calling for an end to the War on Drugs, and Gary Johnson who is calling for the same thing is also doing better now than any Libertarian candidate before him. I have every reason to believe that pot will be completely legalized within the next decade or so, and I wouldn't be surprised to see opiates and meth and the like begin to be treated more like a medical rather than criminal problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(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]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @12:53PM
So apparently Harris County is great if you've been wrongly accused of drug charges, but is a pit of misogyny for rape cases
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/07/25/0238223 [soylentnews.org]
Something screwy here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @01:14PM
The prosecutors, police, and prison guards are all different people. It seems like, at least in this specific place, the prosecutors seem to take their job seriously, the prison guards are a nightmare, and the police are somewhere in the middle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:23PM
yeah, you're comparing harris county cops/jail vs houston cops/system. they are very different even though houston is in harris county. Both police orgs are too large to describe universally but in general harris county cops are a bunch of fascists while houston cops are somewhat laid back(for cops).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:01PM
Uh, no.
In the rape story, the order was handed down from the DA.
The same DA that is at the forefront of overturning false convictions.
Seems odd to me.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday July 26 2016, @01:04PM
FTFY ;).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:01PM
It IS all about filling prisons. Keep them po' folks locked up, so that the rich bastards can make a dollar. Unjust laws, questionable methods of enforcing the laws, and questionable tests used to enforce the law - it just goes on and on.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:52AM
It's more specific than that: A major purpose of the US criminal justice system is to give black men criminal records so that they can legally be discriminated against for the rest of their lives. They are far more likely to be framed up for drugs, charged for drugs when they are actually caught with them (and this matches personal experience - I know white people caught with pot who were let go by the cops), convicted when they are charged, and punished when they are convicted (again, other white people I know were allowed to go free with no criminal record if their parents put them through a rehab program).
Once saddled with a misdemeanor drug charge, good luck getting a job as a black man in America. So now you have no legal means of working, and are in many cases ineligible for public assistance. So that leaves you doing some sort of street hustle like selling CDs or loose cigarettes. Oh, but guess what, doing that will get you killed by the cops. So if you're going to be killed by the cops anyways if you're caught, you might as well sell something much more profitable like drugs. And now you're a felon, and either killed by the cops, or by a rival drug gang, or you're arrested, thrown in jail, disenfranchised, and even less likely to find work when you get out. So now your best option is a career in crime.
And this is still relevant:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:03AM
Oh, I'm aware of all of that, but white boys also run afoul of almost all the same things. It's all about class, with poor blacks at the bottom of the food chain, and rich whites at the top of the food chain.
I can attest to the fact that once a young white male has been "indoctrinated" into the system, he is trapped in it. He doesn't have much chance of getting a "good" job, and he has all the same challenges that the young black male has. The ONLY advantage he has over the black male is, he won't be discriminated against for the color of his face.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:25AM
And that matters a lot:
- He's much more likely to avoid the criminal trouble I discussed earlier, solely because he's white.
- He's much more likely to be able to get a blue-collar job, for example on construction crews.
- If he somehow manages to work his way up through hard work and education, he'll be able to pretend to be someone like me who was born upper-middle-class, and be treated accordingly.
- If he really really makes good, he'll be treated as a member of the rich elite for the rest of his life.
Contrast that with a black kid who works his way up through sheer talent and hard work and education from nothing to be president of the United States, and is still treated by a lot of the country like an uppity n*****.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:00PM
Nonsense - "looks black to me, so must be guilty" is probably accurately perceiving the colour, it's the second part of it that's flawed.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:00AM
Imagine trying to distinguish green from blue under a sodium vapor street lamp.
Police spend a lot of time in places where the lighting was not chosen for a high Color Rendering Index.
Which is of course the least of the problems and scarcely worth mentioning.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:07PM
Why would they not do an actual test after the arrest? Typically stuff like this is just to test if that white powder is flour like the guys says or something that is probably drugs. That show "Border Security" is always careful to say that "this package of white powder seems like drugs, so we will send it to the lab to be tested" after those field tests return + results.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:37PM
I wrote about it in the post below yours [soylentnews.org], so see there for more information.
Just to answer your question: they do a lab test... it just takes them a few weeks. Of course, the arrestee spends those few weeks in prison. Once the labs confirm it's flour, you're free to go - have fun putting your life back together after disappearing for a month!
(Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:52PM
The only reason anyone would keep flour in a tied up plastic bag is to pass it off as drugs.
So either they’re trying to scam someone or they’re trying to sell drugs. Both are illegal.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:07PM
This post is frightening. I do not want to live on the same planet as you. My supermarket sells powdered sugar in a plastic bag. The hipster co-op across the street even sells powdered sugar and flour in unmarked plastic bags, and they provide twist-ties as well.
You're an small-minded idiot, you're leaping to conclusions, and you are a threat to liberty.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:16PM
I'm worried of getting pulled over every time I carry my climbing gear and chalk bag...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:31PM
The drug laws themselves are illegal and fraud needs some sort of proof. By your logic card writer possession should be illegal, though i'm sure there are perfectly legitimate uses for them, like city pool membership cards, etc. IOW, you're a treasonous slave, you're just too brainwashed to know it.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:06PM
They don't just test baggies though. They'll also test that little bit of white powder in your trunk. The one from the flour bag breaking open when you were coming home from the grocery store yesterday.
Or that white smear of powdered sugar from when you dropped the doughnut.
Or (this has happened) the bit where you dropped the headache powder.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:07AM
Or the little white spot of foam the detailers left on the carpet in your truck. That happened. I made four searches without finding the story again but it ended with his job gone, his girlfriend gone, and his truck seized. With "tests" like those out there, it's only sheer luck that's saving you from winding up like someone in a country western song.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:13PM
Heh, be careful what you wish for. Although I'm sure there is nothing in your life that could possibly be misconstrued by law enforcement as somehow being illegal. In particular by someone who really, really wants to find something, anything at all.
Good luck with that.
But please don't wish that hellhole world on me.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Tuesday July 26 2016, @10:36PM
urine idjit, username, i know both drug users and non-drug users, and non-drug users who are rabidly anti-drug (because they are fraidy cat morons), and THEY ALL use baggies ALL the time for ALL kinds of shit that has nothing to do with drugs or passing off white powder as drugs...
as i say, urine idjit...
i use them to store wildflower seeds in, seedheads and all, and -you know what- to a moron-in-a-hurry, *might* look like a certain quasi-illegal herb...
*gasp*
SWMBO often uses them to prepackage cooking ingredients (including flour and sugar!!!) for her cooking club at school...
*gasp*
can you IMAGINE (nevermind empathize) outside of YOUR OWN limited life experiences ? ? ?
('if i don't do it /need it/ want it/see it/ like it then nobody else should, too, wah wah wah')
*sheesh*
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:19AM
Because they're motivated by arrest and conviction numbers and not by scientific accuracy or justice.
A bogus drug test is a success in a corrupt system if it allows putting someone in jail who can't afford to bail out. The cop gets credit for one more arrest. After the victim realizes the only way to keep their children is a guilty plea, the prosecutor gets credit for another conviction.
Coerced pleas are absolutely a thing. Imagine being told that you can plead out to time served and get back to your job and kids in time to keep them, or else stay in jail for months until a trial date. Even that assumes you might get a fair trial. The Tulia defendants who pleaded guilty didn't expect to get one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulia,_Texas#1999_drug_arrest_scandal [wikipedia.org]
System's broken, folks, and it doesn't work like it does on TV.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:32PM
The answer to the headline seems to be "yes", for once. I blame the editors for not reversing the question. Next time, try "Are drug tests that fill U.S. prisons accurate?" or something :)
Anyway, I wrote a post about this exact thing [soylentnews.org] a few days ago, referencing the NYT article from TFS, so I'll just quote it here:
There was a post about that a week ago on Techdirt, titled Field Drug Tests: The $2 Tool That Can Destroy Lives [techdirt.com], covering a NYT article [nytimes.com] from two weeks ago.
It's mostly about "Amy Albritton, who spent 21 days in jail thanks to a false positive", lost her job, her apartment and furniture (considered abandoned after disappearing for three weeks), now has a felony record (pleaded guilty to get out instead of facing three years in jail - after three weeks in jail, the evidence was still not tested) and can't get a new job (see: felony record).
All that because the cops used a cheap test (that also reacts to a hundred or so legal substances), treated it as definite evidence and locked her up. There are also a few more examples in there.
Down in the comments below the TD article a forensic scientist ("Jessie") popped up, gave a decent explanation about the tests and their unreliability.
The process goes like this:
1) Inadequately trained cops use cheap tests that give dubious results.
2) You get arrested and thrown in jail.
3) It usually takes three or more weeks for a lab to do further tests - if you don't have money for lawyer, you either wait in prison or plead guilty.
- If you wait, you will probably lose your job, your apartment and all your possessions (you've been missing for weeks, after all).
- If you plead guilty, you now have a felony record, with all the perks that gets you!
4) It doesn't really matter if you plead guilty or not, you'll still lose everything. Either you're a felon or you've been missing for weeks!
5) Good luck finding a new job and apartment with that felony record!
6) Profit?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday July 26 2016, @05:22PM
> The answer to the headline seems to be "yes", for once. I blame the editors for not reversing the question.
The law of headlines doesn't apply when the "journalist" uses a CYA question to avoid retribution from powerful beings.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @09:08PM
...seriously? You're not "missing" when you're incarcerated. You're incapacitated (I don't mean that in a legal sense). You do get a phone call, and I have to imagine they let you try again on occasion if no one picks up.
Anyone not destitute and with a normal social network should be able to handle being incarcerated for a month without too much trouble. If you're really smart about planning for various types of incapacitation ahead of time, someone you trust has your SDPOA (Statutory Durable Power of Attorney) and can access your bank accounts to pay your rent. If the rent is being paid, no one will notice or care that you're not in the apartment. People take month-long trips, after all.
If you're less smart and no one has your SDPOA, you may need to do one from jail, but ... umm ... you have a lawyer.
If you're even less smart than that and have a reasonable income but no savings ... you dug your own grave.
Now, the woman in question appears to be poor, and to have strained family relations. So, this was harder on her than it would be on most people.
Nevertheless, I read the article, and she made some definite unforced errors:
- Big Fucking Mistake #1: consenting to the search of the car. Never do that. Ever. Don't be intimidated into doing it, either; Supreme Court case law says they can't make you wait for a drug-sniffing dog to arrive.
- Mistake #2: taking the plea deal. Should be obvious.
Now, it sounds like she's had a hard life, and the justice system shouldn't only protect those who know how to assert their rights. It's a sad story. But, for most people on this site, if being laid up for a month causes your entire life to fall apart, you're doing it wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @02:58PM
FTFY
(Score: 2, Troll) by Username on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:16PM
I have the perfect solution for BLM and other types of persecution complexes. Get rid of all public law enforcement, and release all prisoners.
Life will just go back to the old days where the rich and middle class is protected by private security, while those in the ghettos just kill each other off. Sure the LEOs will get screwed out of a nice job, but I’m sure Pinkertons or G4S will hire them on when business starts booming.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:06PM
hmm, how about a solution to the 'justice' system that would actually be helpful instead deconstructive. Off the top of my head:
Fix obvious problems:
arresting people based on crap drug tests? really
asset forfeiture before a trial finding guilt? how does that even make sense
plea bargaining system could be entirely revamped:
Providing people with lawyers that actually have enough time to represent them (public defenders have notoriously high case loads)
Making bond sizes meaningful but affordable to defendants without getting a loan.
Heck, those alone would make a huge difference so I'm going to stop. But I will add that I believe that these are absolutely required by the Constitution:
* The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...
* In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...
* Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Three amendments out of ten, without even trying, and look at number VIII, just look at it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:18PM
Justice John Paul Stevens once dissented, saying that a particular asset forfeiture case constituted an excessive fine, but he was the only one.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:58PM
Private for profit prisons are packed with innocent poor people who are worth 50k a year to our corporate overlords!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:57PM
If many of those people were given that 50k a year instead for sure that even much of the guilty ones won't be criminals anymore.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:26AM
For-profit prison contracts can include guaranteed occupancy rates.
If the government doesn't supply enough prisoners to the for-profit prison, the government has to pay for the shortfall.
It's bad civic hygiene to have incentive structures like that in place. It's bad even when it's less blatant than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @04:28AM
Try this link...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal [wikipedia.org]
( Deleted period at the end )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @06:37PM
I found this video to be very informative when it comes to explaining one of the huge problems with modern psychology that everyone around here always talks about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esPRsT-lmw8 [youtube.com]
Psychology and neurology are very interrelated. Many people who have psychological problems (ie: criminals) have neurological problems and determining those neurological problems can be important for prescribing a better treatment. After all psychology is a product of neurology.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday July 26 2016, @07:14PM
#1: You're convicted based on a lab test, not a field test. So the field test, if it's faulty, will never result in a conviction. If it's not drugs then the lab test won't make an error.
#2: You should probably know if the white powder in the bag is cocaine. Did you go to a dealer and try to buy drugs? If your best argument is "He might have given me fake drugs." then worrying about some field test is kind of silly, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @08:41PM
Huh? I'm not sure which article you're responding to, but I'm fairly certain it's not this one.
As pointed out above,
#1: You're convinced based on a lab test that might be finished a month or two after your arrest. If you can't afford the bail or bond to get out of jail, you're pretty much fucked. You're going to lose your home, everything in it, and your job after disappearing for a month.
#2: I don't see what's silly about telling the thug arresting you that the white speck on the floorboard is a crumb and the white powder he's removing from BC Powder [bcpowder.com] packaging is an over-the-counter medicine. The person this happened to in TFA was perfectly fucking aware of what the substances the cops found were. Hint: it was not contraband, it was not meant to look like contraband. How much of a disingenuous piece of shit can you be?
I will never understand you authoritarians who come out of the woodwork with your “If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about” bullshit any time somebody points out that the war on drugs might cause perversions of justice. You are the people who enable those perversions to take place.
I hope you're fucking wrongly accused of possession some day.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday July 26 2016, @09:23PM
You're going to lose your home, everything in it, and your job after disappearing for a month.
Bullshit, okay? Being in jail shouldn't mean you've "disappeared" unless you're incompetent. I won't repeat myself: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=14695&cid=380442 [soylentnews.org]
Yes, she lost her apartment and furniture. She has a sad life story (not her fault), was poor (not her fault), and made some mistakes we know about and likely some we don't.
She isn't most people. What, do you not even have one month's salary in the bank to pay the rent or mortgage? If you're not destitute-- and most people aren't -- you're an idiot for living paycheck to paycheck. Don't do that, and do make plans for your temporary incapacitation (statutory durable power of attorney among other things, like medical POA etc.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @10:38PM
GP here. Yes, I have savings enough to be out of work unexpectedly for several months. Could probably stretch to a year if needed. I'm hoping to have my home paid off soon so I have one less monkey every month who wants money from me. To give your other comment a nod (which was refreshing instead of authoritarian drivel), I also wouldn't ever go for the plea deal. That's a no-brainer for me, even if I were living paycheck to paycheck.
There's also the asset forfeiture question. It wouldn't be difficult for the pigs, seeing that I'm not going to just go along with their plea deal, to claim my savings account. So even though I have savings (god living paycheck to paycheck sucks), there's no guarantee somebody with durable power of attorney would even be able to pay my bills.
There's the hope that they'll let you post bail, but the ball's entirely in their court.
Additionally, I wouldn't have a job after getting hauled off on bogus charges unless I were let go before the next workday. Maybe people aren't as shitty in your neck of the woods, but I doubt I could get a similar job where I live after being merely charged with possession since most people would presume I merely got off on a technicality. I can take two unscheduled days off in a row without needing a very good excuse. At the very least, I would need to relocate and probably work working a shit service job for a while.
I'm not sure I can think of many other people I know in meatspace who don't live paycheck to paycheck. Don't know how somebody can live that way. Everything is more expensive. I'd rather starve every now and then than get on the credit card roller coaster again.
This point is, there's more of a constellation of things that need to come together to come out of a false accusation like that relatively unscathed.
- Never accept plea deals unless you know if your heart of hearts you're guilty and what you did was indefensible. Don't believe anything they threaten you with if you're innocent. (See also don't talk to cops.)
- More and more people are having difficulty making ends meet, meaning credit cards step in to buy food, leaving more and more people living paycheck to paycheck in debt slavery. We can look down on them and feel smug, but that doesn't help anybody.
- Telling most employers that you've been arrested does not look good, and employers don't care when you take an unplanned leave of absence and can't be contacted for a month or two unless you're in a coma or something, and even then all bets are off.
- Hope and pray that they don't use asset forfeiture against you, because then you will be well and truly fucked even if you did everything above correctly.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:43AM
documents how long it can take to get to a trial. Admittedly, Carlos Montero's seven years is an outlier.
Someone who could ride out a month might also be able to afford bail. The people in jail are there because they don't have assets.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:46AM
I do not know why the URL got eaten. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/nyregion/mayor-de-blasios-plan-to-shrink-rikers-population-tackle-court-delays.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:31AM
Everything you say is for a world in which cases get investigated and settled by truthful evidence.
Lobby your lawmakers for bail reform if you want to live in that world.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Tuesday August 02 2016, @10:27PM
I guess I'm not quite sure what you're saying--what do you suggest as an alternative? The article was about field testing kits. Are you saying the kits don't work? Are you saying police fake evidence? Are you saying the feds fake evidence? If they fake evidence then the drugs are real and the kits probably work...
As to bail reform for a felony amount of drugs in Florida bail is 1k-5k or so. That's $100-$500(10%) needed to get out of jail for a Felony. What should it be? Depends on history of course, but $100 seems pretty darn reasonable to me. If someone is on welfare and can barely feed their children why exactly are they feeding their drug habit?