Of all people, you’d think cops would be experts in noting the difference between donuts and illicit drugs.
But hey, we’re all fallible.
Although that excuse isn’t enough to satiate Daniel Rushing of Orlando.
He was pulled over by police in December and consented to a search of his vehicle. Cops thought little flakes of glaze from a Krispy Kreme donut he’d consumed while driving were actually methamphetamine.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
When Rushing opened his wallet, [Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins] saw that he had a concealed weapons permit, she wrote. He told her that he had a gun, and she asked him to step out of his car, a small Chevy.
That’s when she spotted “a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were,” she wrote.
“I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic,” she wrote.
Riggs-Hopkins had been staking out the 7-Eleven Rushing had just left, because of suspected drug activity. The officer performed a roadside drug test and the substance came back positive for meth.
The only problem? Those tests are bunk as fuck. But they don’t stop cops from arresting people.
Rushing protested vehemently, insisting it was donut crumbs.
“I kept telling them, ‘That’s … glaze from a doughnut. … They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, ‘No, it’s meth, crystal meth.'”
His arrest report confirms that he tried to tell them.
“Rushing stated that the substance is sugar from a Krispie Kreme Donut that he ate,” Riggs-Hopkins wrote.
Rushing was released on $2,500 bond ten hours later and after being strip searched. Three days later, a lab confirmed what he’d been trying to tell the officers and the charges were dropped.
Now, he’s hired a lawyer and is requesting damages from the city.
He also said he’d never consent to a search again.
Good.
[Via the Orlando Sentinel]