Story Archive

Drug Bust II

Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins of the Orlando, Fla., Police stopped Daniel Rushing for speeding and failing to come to a complete stop. He was exiting the parking lot of a 7-Eleven store the officer was staking out for drug activity, she recorded in her report. “I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience,” her report says, that the substance she saw on the floorboard when he got out of his Chevy was “some sort of narcotic.” Rushing, 64, consented to a search of the car, and Riggs-Hopkins and her colleagues found more of the substance. Rushing claimed it was glaze from donuts, but when roadside drug tests showed it was crystal meth, he was arrested. Weeks later, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement tested the substance, and shortly thereafter, the charges were dropped: the substance turned out to be glaze from donuts. Orlando police say they do not track the use of roadside drug tests. (AC/South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald) ...So they have no idea how many people they’ve arrested over false positives.