Had this innocent mother been wrongly accused of the same crime of trafficking opioids today, she could have very well been executed according to the administration"s new policy.
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Houston, TX — Ross LeBeau, of Houston, was recently cleared of drug charges after he was arrested for possession of Methamphetamine. It turns out that LeBeau was actually in possession of kitty litter, not meth. However, this made no difference to the cops who kidnapped and caged him for it.
Considering that there was nearly a half pound of the substance in his vehicle, the police thought that they had conducted the bust of the century. They even put out a press release with LeBeau’s mugshot to brag about the bust, after two faulty field tests determined that the substance was crystal meth. While LeBeau spent 3 days in jail, the kitty litter was sent to a forensics lab for further testing, and it was ultimately discovered that the substance was not meth.
“They thought they had the biggest bust in Harris County. This was the bust of the year for them,” LeBeau said.
“I was wrongly accused. I’m going to do everything in my power to clear my name,” he added.
Attorney George Reul pointed out that the department’s entire field testing system may be compromised.
“Ultimately it might be bad testing equipment that they need to re-evaluate,” attorney George Reul said.
Cases like this are nothing new, in fact, we report on them on a regular basis.
According to the national litigation and public policy organization, the Innocence Project, at any given time there are an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 innocent people currently locked in cages in U.S. prisons.
Couple this staggering number with the number of people locked up for non-violent drug possession and the United States looks more like the Gulag of the 1930’s than the Land of the Free.
But how can so many innocent people be locked up, how does the state present evidence, that it doesn’t have, to get a conviction? Well, the folks at the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the U.S., Marijuana Policy Project, made a short video that explains just how easy it is for police to turn an entirely innocent person into a criminal.
During the short video below, the researchers demonstrate how easy it is for police to generate a false positive during a field test for drugs.
The group tests over the counter Tylenol PM in a police test kit for cocaine — the test kit says the Tylenol is cocaine.
The group also tests the most popular chocolate in the world, Hershey’s chocolate, for marijuana, it also tests positive.
Perhaps the most disturbing test was when the group put absolutely nothing into the field test kit, and they received a positive result.
The implications associated with wrongfully accusing and then claiming to have evidence of an individual in possession of an illegal substance are formidable — to say the least. Most people are simply unaware of the fact that police test kits are a crapshoot.
According to Forensic Resources:
The director of a lab recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for forensic science excellence has called field drug testing kits “totally useless” due to the possibility of false positives. In laboratory experiments, at least two brands of field testing kits have been shown to produce false positives in tests of Mucinex, chocolate, aspirin, chocolate, and oregano.
In spite of these recommendations and multiple examples of innocent people being incarcerated for their error, police departments across the country continue to employ the use of these “totally useless” kits.
On May 8 of this year, Gale Griffin and her husband Wendall Harvey, who’ve been driving trucks together for the last seven years were wrongfully charged with possession of cocaine. They were targeted by incompetent cops who used criminally ineffective drug test kits on a white powdery substance found inside the couple’s truck. The kit identified the substance as cocaine. But it was not cocaine. It was baking soda Griffin used for stomach problems. However, they were caged for months while the reckless cops ignored their pleas of innocence.
Also this year, Alexander Bernstein of Brooklyn was jailed and had his life ruined after cops mistook soap for cocaine.
Wenonah resident John Cokos recently settled a lawsuit against the Gloucester County police department for $35,000. The lawsuit comes after an arrest for drug possession because the officer claimed that his crackers were crack rocks.
In October, college student John Harrington was thrown in prison after police, with one of these field drug test kits, tested sugar, and came up with a false positive for cocaine.
“Really, I’m really in jail right now for powdered sugar, ” John Harrington thought after it happened.
We’ve also seen the case in which police mistook Jolly Ranchers for meth and jailed an innocent man. Love Olatunijojo, 25, and an unidentified friend purchased Jolly Ranchers at the It’Sugar candy emporium in Coney Island in June of 2013. Several blocks away, cops stopped and searched the friends and mistook the candies for crystal meth. Olatunijojo was then thrown in jail.
In August, we reported on the story of a man who was held in prison for over four months because police falsely identified salt as crystal meth.
And the list goes on…
What does it say about police departments across the country who knowingly use test kits that will implicate innocent people in a crime that they did not commit that will land them in jail?
It is bad enough that the state will kidnap, cage and kill people when they possess a substance deemed illegal by the state. But, when they kidnap, cage and kill people because of their own negligence involved in testing someone’s personal items — they stoop to an entirely new low.
If you’re caught with drugs in Las Vegas, NV, there’s a 99 percent chance you’re going to be convicted of a felony, even if the drugs in your possession are something as simple as aspirin and caffeine. That’s because, as The Free Thought Project has previously reported, the field tests, conducted by minimally trained police officers, are flawed.
The $2 field drug test, manufactured by The Safariland Group, have been proven to be unreliable. And according to the manufacturer, should not be used as a stand-alone test for convictions related to drug possession. But that’s precisely what’s been occurring in Clark County, NV. And here’s how it works to serve as an injustice for unsuspecting citizens.
First, a traffic stop, or a conversation with an officer of the peace leads to a search of a person’s vehicle or person. When a suspected illegal drug is found, a police officer then takes the substance and tests it with The Safariland Group’s field test which, most of the time, produces a false positive result for illegal drugs — even if the test kit is completely empty.
The suspected drug user or trafficker is then taken into custody, charged with possession and spends time in jail, potentially leading to a loss in wages, time away from family and work, and may be traumatic to the individual. Instead of going to trial, and spending more time in jail awaiting a judgement by a jury of their peers, when the citizen goes before a judge during an initial hearing, the individual often pleads guilty, is given a fine, or some other punitive measure (rehab, therapy, community service, etc.) and is allowed to return to the community.
There’s only one major problem in the process. The Metropolitan Police Department’s own crime lab has declared the tests are unreliable and may be leading to false positives, false imprisonment, wrongful convictions, or worse; prison time.
Now, armed with the latest facts, and a result of increased news publicity surrounding the unreliable drug field tests, a Clark County Defense Attorneys organization has formed a committee, and is preparing to challenge the validity of those cheap, and admittedly unreliable tests.
“Laurie Diefenbach, a veteran defense lawyer and member of the committee, said the group is studying several options for taking on the routine use of the tests.” According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, “one option would be to file a broad motion asking the Las Vegas Justice Court to reconsider the admissibility of the tests at preliminary hearings,” because the “tests are not admissible as evidence at trial in Las Vegas.” By filing a broad motion objecting to the unreliable drug tests the Journal reported, “Individual judges” would then be able to “make their own judgments on whether to permit field tests to be used in the plea process.”
Ronnie Gabriel, ProPublica reporter who first broke the story, explained the situation Clark County residents are facing when they’re charged with drug possession. He says the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has “known about the problems with field tests.”
In 2014, Metro Police “produced a report saying ‘we’re finding false positives in methamphetamine and cocaine and we need to stop using those field tests,” he said describing a police report filed with the federal government as part of a governmental grant to study their police lab’s methodology. Gabriel said he stumbled across the report in 2015, and began to question why the department continued to use a test its own crime lab had deemed unreliable.
What seemed to shock him the most during his investigation, was when he learned the police department not only refused to discontinue the use of their own admittedly flawed tests but they expanded the test to include heroin as well.
The ProPublica reporter said the science behind the field tests is about 200 years old, but said the tests could very well identify “80 other things” which aren’t illegal to possess. “There are many different substances which produce the exact same [chemical color] reaction that are not cocaine. There are migraine medicines [and] Lidocaine, like I said will often,” produce the same color reaction in the field tests as cocaine.
Gabriel says, “It’s not that they’re [police] lying,” but that the pressure to continue with the arrest and prosecution is very great and armed with these basic field tests, the officers proceed with confidence in the arrest. The only problem, as Gabriel sees it, is that the arrests are predicated on flawed and easily tricked field tests.
When asked if there’s a “feasible solution in the near future” to solve the problem of faulty false positive field drug tests, the ProPublica reporter responded by saying there’s a costly but effective solution to the cheap and admittedly unreliable field drug tests. “They could lab test all drug evidence in criminal cases,” he concluded.
Another solution, that is less talked about, would be to end the war on drugs entirely.
As it stands, once a suspect pleads guilty to possession in the preliminary hearing with a judge, Gabriel says the drug evidence is destroyed, and along with it, all hopes that the now convicted drug offender could later be exonerated.
The ProPublica reporter seemed worried at the thought of, “wrongful drug convictions on a level we don’t know because the Las Vegas crime lab does not re-test the field test results after somebody pleads guilty (at the preliminary hearing).” Gabriel describes the seriousness of being charged with drug possession in Las Vegas. He said, “more than two-thirds of cases are ended by guilty plea at the first hearing so the vast majority of drug evidence in Las Vegas never gets tested, those field tests never get re-checked even though they’re known to produce false positives.”
As The Free Thought Project has reported, independent lab tests revealed these same drug tests being used in Clark County, NV have produced false positives for cocaine when Tylenol PM was tested, and something as basic as Hersheys Chocolate has produced a false positive for marijuana. It’s time to call your city’s police departments and voice your objections to field drug tests being administered by non-scientists, police officers.
Pass on this article to every police officer you know, and to every sheriff out there. Let’s get the word out that these tests are potentially sending thousands to jail, ruining people’s lives and reputations, and possibly sending some to prison. Share this story with everyone you know who carries any over the counter medicines in their vehicles. Let’s get the word out and become vigilant to protect our fellow citizens’ rights to carry legal over the counter substances in their vehicles.
