There is a bizarre case in Orlando where Daniel Rushing was arrested after a police officer declared that she recognized meth on the floor of his car from her extensive experience. It not only turned out to be icing from Rushing’s Krispy Kreme donut but Rushing told the officers what it was when they asked. To make matters worse, a field test registered positive for meth — another false positive in a long line of such cases.
Rushing was stopped on a clear pretext stop. He was told that he did not come to a complete stop in exiting a 7-11 (which was under surveillance for alleged drug activity). He was also cited for going 42 mph in a 30 mph zone — another ubiquitous violation. In a controversial case from over twenty years ago in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 812–13 (1996). The Court ruled that police could conduct a pretextual stop, such a stop for minor traffic violations, to achieve a search so long as there is probable cause or reasonable suspicion to justify a traffic stop.
Once they stopped Rushing, the officers asked to search his car and he consented. Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins, an eight-year department veteran, she spotted “a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were. . . I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic.”
That alone was dubious but then the officers said that they did two roadside drug tests and both came back positive for the illegal substance. Rushing was handcuffed, arrested, strip searched and jailed. Only later did a lab test show that the substance was not drugs.
Conveniently, the police department insisted that it has no data on the number of false positive from field tests. That would seem an example of willful blindness since the department should be interested in whether it is getting false readings. The New York Times has found that data showed that 21 percent of the time, drug evidence that was listed by local authorities as methamphetamine turned out to be wrong.
A lawsuit in such a circumstance would not only be advisable but potentially beneficial in deterring such abusive arrests.
In summary of above post. More police officers need to be personally sued by victims of bad cops.
I am starting to think this will be the best course to stop this. As cops start going into personal bankruptcy they may start to think twice about their actions.
Oh and of course, we need to finally end the drug war which is nothing more than an end around of the 4th Amendment in the search for money to fund ever expanding government.
Dont just sue the department and county. Sue the individual officers separately which they are not protected by courts on. When officers are paying out of their own bank accounts, it will put a stop to this nonsense very quickly, especially if they have wives.
It is good to see Mike Appleton and BFM stopping by here.
bettykath, We all love your The Onion parody of an SJW, comments. But, they are getting a bit over the top. Parody has to have some connection to reality and you seem to have drifted away from that of late. Get back to that good ol’ bettykath parody that we all love.
I can’t believe that people crazy.
Cops are fully aware of donut abuse. This cop should have been aware that this was donut substance. She should be blinded for doing the strip search.
Steve – going for a name change?
This is just harassment policing.
Paul, two San Diego PD officers from the gang suppression unit shot last night in the ‘hood. One died. The other shot in the upper torso but he’ll survive. It’s a jungle. Presence shouldn’t be construed as harassment. We need cops in this City.
Steve – glad to see you are keeping your old name. 🙂 Sorry about you losing a cop. Always found the SDPD very nice people.
jischinger:
the way to solve and put an end to these problems is just don’t go out any more.
travel only during rush hour and shop only in one place for all of your needs, during daylight hours and on the same day each week.
———————————
That might work if you’re white, but not otherwise.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512374/Florida-police-stop-man-258-times-TRESPASSING-place-work.html
A Florida convenience store owner and his employee plan to sue the city of Miami Gardens and its police department for racial profiling after his employee was questioned by police 258 times, searched more than 100 times, jailed 56 times and arrested for trespassing 62 times.
Alex Saleh, the proprietor at the 207 Quickstop on Northwest 207 Street in Miami Gardens, said he has more than two dozen surveillance videos to support his case.
The employee at the centre of the controversy, Earl Sampson, 28, says police officers constantly harass him while he’s at work, sometimes two to three times a day, without any justified cause.
‘They’re always stopping me, going in my pockets, asking me for my ID, running my name,’ Sampson told CBS4. ‘I feel like I can’t even be in my own neighborhood anymore.’
In three separate instances on the video clips, police can be seen questioning the same man at the same location.
Sampson’s lengthy rap sheet is filled with minor infractions, including more than 60 citations for trespassing, mostly at the 207 Quickstop, where he works.
Be careful with birthday cakes. The icing was dosed with 800 hits of LSD
Play for your life. Jerry should have sued the hippie freak.
Repeat after me: Barry cooper, Barry Cooper. . .
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/city-settles-men-arrested-nypd-cops-confused-jolly-ranchers-crystal-meth-article-1.1927186 Jolly ranchers candy leads to Meth arrest..
Ludicrous screw up. I wonder if Rushing has grounds to sue the Test Kit Manufacturer??? Another company, Theranos, is having all kinds of legal problems over its blood testing accuracy:
If there is a 20% failure or false positive rate for the drug test in the donut case, then it looks like the damages of being arrested, locked up, humiliated, forced to put up bail, etc. are all definitely foreseeable. My goodness, but there are numerous lawsuits where the failure rate of a product might only be less than 1%, like exploding Fords Pintos, and the Plaintiff prevails.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I don’t know where to begin with this.
At the very least it is Confirmation Bias. But really it is much worse.
Second, I’ve seen quite a lot of meth and one thing it does not resemble is doughnut glazing. Doesn’t the stereotypical police officer know doughnuts?
I would like to see a video of this officer using a drug field test kit. I don’t know which manufacturer they use but my preferred choice was the NIK brand. Essentially, the NIK system consists of various pouches containing usually one to three smaller ampules of liquid. The suspected controlled substance is placed into the pouch and the ampules are broken in a certain order. In that system for meth you use Kit A then Kit U. Kit A will flowchart you to which type of drug kit to use next . For Meth, it is a two step color change on A Orange then Brown and on U it will show Blue if presumptive positive. All of these color transitions must match in that order to show a presumptive positive for Methamphetamine.
To say that the test went to a positive result with sugar on each of these conditions it is completely not possible to do so.
Again, I do not know which manufacturer they used but NIK is probably the most likely.
Here is the flow chart for NIK
http://i.imgur.com/lCrX9Hu.png
What I suspect with these field test kits is that they do not show exactly + or – like a pregnancy test strip does. It is an analogue, chemical system so one needs to recognize what a positive test result truly is. In fact, one can roughly gauge the concentration or purity of the suspected controlled substance by how rapidly it changes to the positive color (in many cases how pronounced the chemical is. I suspect they completely mangled the test up or they simply lied or greatly exaggerated even a minute color change which would not be enough to be proper.
Plus these officers seem to have forgotten the field test kit is a presumptive positive test and not a substitute for a certified crime lab or state toxicologist. A white substance on a car floor is no more proof of being meth than is a guacamole stain on a blue dress. A white substance in small plastic bag in the pocket of a known drug user seen holding a crack pipe is usually a good candidate for a field test kit.
This is exactly what I have been saying for years. Don’t get involved in stupid stuff like this ridiculously weak PC, it always comes back to haunt you.
when stuff like this happens can you sue the department or government?
the way to solve and put an end to these problems is just don’t go out any more.
travel only during rush hour and shop only in one place for all of your needs, during daylight hours and on the same day each week.
if you can afford it, when you do go out, keep a camera on you at all times.
Do not engage in any other conversation other than hello and goodbye.
“If you consult the US Pharmacopeia (a listing of chemicals and their properties), the sheer number of chemicals and compounds which have a glossy off white appearance number in the tens of thousands, of which only a few are scheduled drugs.”
Sooooo ….. If it looks like meth it is more likely not to be meth?
‘We wanted to arrest him, but the stuff in the baggie we found in his pocket looked just like meth so we had to let him go’
Plain English language leads to the darnedest conclusions.
Rushing should have been arrested and jailed in any event. Even if the substance on the floor was icing from a Krispy Kreme donut, rather than from meth crystals, he would be in violation of the Bloomberg Statute, Section 2397.43(b) for excessive consumption of carbohydrates, a crime punishable by a fine of $3,000 and a mandatory 30 day jail sentence for first time offenders.
Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins transferred to Orlando after growing bored on the Reno 911! set. Her long sparkling acrylic nails and matching lipstick, bleached hair, voluminous (aka voluptuous) posterior, and eleven years of daily Krispy Kreme workouts make her a force to be recognized with.
Why can’t I ever get a case like this?
“Probable” means “More Likely than Not” – and so probable cause should mean more likely to be than not to be.
If you consult the US Pharmacopeia (a listing of chemicals and their properties), the sheer number of chemicals and compounds which have a glossy off white appearance number in the tens of thousands, of which only a few are scheduled drugs.
Maybe only a couple of which has the officer possibly been trained to LOOK FOR (and so, like most things… When we look for things we seem to find them – right or wrong – wherever we look)
Although- given the natural propensity of police for Krispie Kremes- and I would have assumed the officer has cleaned up a considerable amount of Krispie Kreme Kop residue from his cruiser – he did not recognize it.
Or mayhaps he did, and like all else it was simply a pretense…
He just wanted to do the strip search.
Consented to a search?????? Are you effen kidding me? Are there people this stupid, still? I’m not saying the correct punishment for such stupidity is to be falsely arrested and strip searched, but let’s just say I’ll give you 2-1 odds on $100 that this guy shall never in a million centuries make this ridiculous mistake again.
Let’s say you are accused of some crime in city X. Now you know you’ve never ever even been to that city in your entire life. So you tell the LEO, “I’ve never even been to that city!!!!”
Now they investigate, and they find a neutral witness who is willing to swear under oath he saw you in that city on approximately X date. (Whether you or the witness are correct is absolutely irrelevant.)
Immediately the DA adds obstruction of justice to the earlier charge.
And don’t EVER open your door to a stranger. Once you open the door to a LEO, they walk right through it if they want, and swear latter you allowed them entrance, which you did (physically). When you demand they leave, they just chose not to hear it. Ask, “Who is it?” Look through the peep hole. If it’s a LEO, open a window and talk to him through a window.
The net has video of a LEO actually planting drugs in a business to falsely arrest an innocent person.