(Radley
Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties
for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the
Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.")
"Last week, my Post colleague Abby Phillip wrote about Joseph Ray Burrell, a Minnesota man who spent more than two months in jail because a police drug field test incorrectly identified a bag of vitamins in his car as amphetamines. It isn’t the first time one of these field tests has caused a wrongful arrest. Or the second. Or the third. In fact, I’ve been compiling a running list of all the materials that one or more of these field tests has mistaken for drugs..........Why, it’s almost as if these field tests will say whatever law enforcement officers want them to.........Six years ago, the Marijuana Policy Project put out a study to demonstrate the high error rate in these tests and to draw attention to the fact that false positives can lead to wrongful arrests. It didn’t seem to do much good." Click on the link below for the partial list:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/26/a-partial-list-of-things-that-field-testing-drug-kits-have-mistakenly-identified-as-contraband/
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/jolly-ranchers-sage-and-breath-mints
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
"Last week, my Post colleague Abby Phillip wrote about Joseph Ray Burrell, a Minnesota man who spent more than two months in jail because a police drug field test incorrectly identified a bag of vitamins in his car as amphetamines. It isn’t the first time one of these field tests has caused a wrongful arrest. Or the second. Or the third. In fact, I’ve been compiling a running list of all the materials that one or more of these field tests has mistaken for drugs..........Why, it’s almost as if these field tests will say whatever law enforcement officers want them to.........Six years ago, the Marijuana Policy Project put out a study to demonstrate the high error rate in these tests and to draw attention to the fact that false positives can lead to wrongful arrests. It didn’t seem to do much good." Click on the link below for the partial list:
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/26/a-partial-list-of-things-that-field-testing-drug-kits-have-mistakenly-identified-as-contraband/
See related Marshall Project post on "Jolly ranchers, sage and breath mints: A closer look at a favourite" (and unreliable) law-enforcement tool: drug field tests." "When a Tampa motorist was searched by a
Hillsborough County Sheriff’s patrol last July, deputies found a wad of
brown goo in his wallet. Police popped the substance into a bag - a
field drug test called a NARK II, used by law enforcement across the
country -- gave it a shake, and watched it turn purple, indicating a
positive result for methamphetamine. The motorist, a military officer, said later it
was Jamaican Stone, an herbal “male-enhancement” product, but by then he
had been arrested and booked in jail. He bonded himself out, and
eventually the state’s crime lab found the substance negative for meth. Prosecutors dropped the charges. (His lawyer declined to give his name. His case was first reported by Gloria Gomez for the Tampa Fox TV affiliate.) It was hardly the first time a field test yielded a false positive — and a wrongful arrest. Sage has been mistaken for marijuana; motor oil for heroin; jolly ranchers for meth; and breath mints for crack. In February, a Minnesota man spent months in jail after his vitamin powder tested positive for amphetamines. Soon after the arrest in Tampa, a Hillsborough
police lieutenant conducted his own experiment on the NARK II tests,
which cost between $15 and $20 for a box of ten. He found that just
opening the test bag to the air produced the same shade of purple as
exposure to methamphetamine, according to an internal memo. In February,
the Hillsborough sheriff’s department announced it had switched to a
different field test, made by the same company, which tests for a wider
variety of illegal drugs. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department
declined interview requests.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/jolly-ranchers-sage-and-breath-mints
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
