New Yorkers might have heard that some roadside preliminary drug tests are not always accurate. In October, a Florida man filed a lawsuit against the city of Orlando and Safariland, a drug-test manufacturing company, after he was arrested for methamphetamines because of doughnut glaze found in his car.
According to the complaint, the man was stopped for committing a minor traffic violation in December 2015. Upon being pulled over, he was asked for permission to search his vehicle, which he gave. The officer conducting the search found a white sticky substance on the floor of his car and immediately thought it was either crack cocaine or methamphetamines.
The man claims that he told the officer that the substance was glaze from a Krispy Kreme doughnut he had eaten in his vehicle. The officer tested the substance using a preliminary drug test, and it returned a positive result for methamphetamines. The man was taken into custody and spent 10 hours in jail before he was able to post a $2,500 bond. Several weeks later, forensic testing of the sample revealed that it was, in fact, doughnut glaze and contained no illegal drugs. He is suing for $15,000 in damages and says that his primary goal is to get the problematic tests off of the streets.
Drug allegations are not always open and shut. In some cases involving alleged drug crimes, law enforcement officers make mistakes and falsely identify innocuous substances as illegal drugs. In others, a defendant’s attorney successfully challenges the search that lead to the seizure of the drugs as being made without probable cause.
Source: The Huffington Post, “Man jailed in doughnut glaze-meth mix-up sues city, drug test company,” Steven Hoffer, Oct. 25, 2016
