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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?
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(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Saturday July 30 2016, @04:17AM
You seem have this idea of junkies as evil crooks who like to commit crimes. This is wrong.
Many of them held down jobs until the sheer cost of their habit drove them into crime. There is no way outside of crime for most people to support a habit that costs two or three times the average income. Drop the cost of heroin to $1 per day for a hard core junkie, and he won't bother mugging people for his next fix.
In fact the whole obsession with getting the next dose would greatly reduce. With a steady, legal supply of high quality and known dosage he may even get himself cleaned up enough to participate in society again. At the very least, he stops stealing your stereo and knifing you in alleyways.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:10AM
You seem have this idea of junkies as evil crooks who like to commit crimes. This is wrong.
Not really; my sense of them is of people who simply value getting there next fix over pretty much everything else.
Many of them held down jobs until the sheer cost of their habit drove them into crime.
Again, my experience is that they just stop showing up for work; either they're passed out or chasing another fix. Disappearing for days at a time...
Drop the cost of heroin to $1 per day for a hard core junkie, and he won't bother mugging people for his next fix.
Fair enough. I don't see it getting that low though... not without subsidy programs.