Police field tests for drugs are designed to give false positives when testing vitamins

Sunday, January 10, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: drug test kits, false arrest, drug war

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(NaturalNews) Police have the immoral authority to make false arrests. They can use fake evidence against anyone they choose. It's their word against yours. An entire band of officers can gang up on innocent people and use intimidation to get what they want. They can even use their collective power to take your wife, lock her up, and hold her at ransom, while trying to force you to confess to fake charges.

Field tests for drugs can be designed to give authorities the upper hand when profiling citizens. These tests can be designed to give false positives. Anyone, on any given day, can become a victim to police abuse. It happens often in America and it can happen close to home. Of course, most officers of the law aren't intentionally looking to harass innocent people, but there are gangs of police that will cross moral and ethical bounds to force their will and take what isn't theirs.

In order for police to have a purpose, they need some form of crime to go after. To ensure their purpose, to validate their power, police must bring in enough money and quotas to keep their career meaningful and intact. This causes police to look for trouble and create dangerous situations even when none exist. Furthermore, this culture of policing for profit creates a vacuum that victimizes citizens. When this happens, people begin to fear officers instead of working with them for a more peaceful community.

Man spends weeks in jail for vitamins that police field tests deemed amphetamine

For one 31-year-old man, a false positive drug test turned into weeks of imprisonment. The man, named Joseph Ray Burrell, sat in jail for weeks as crime lab investigators took their time retesting a white powder that Burrell was traveling with the night he was arrested.

Burrell was arrested after his bag of white vitamin powder was confiscated and after the police field test came up positive that the powder was amphetamine. The man pleaded with the officers, telling them the powder was merely just vitamins he was taking. Nearly a month passed before workers at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension retested the vitamin powder. When the results were returned, they had their answer: The powder was in fact vitamins.

Burrell, who was waiting trial for two felony counts of drug possession, was immediately released from jail and dismissed of all charges a day before the trial.

"I had been sitting in the jail since November with my bail set at $250,000," Burrell said. "Then, two days before trial, they dropped the charges and let me go."

An assistant attorney for Blue Earth County confirmed that the initial drug field test tagged the vitamins as amphetamine on November 14, 2014. The Mankato officer reported that he found the contraband in a plastic bag in Burrell's car at a traffic stop in the parking lot of a Riverfront Drive Hy-Vee grocery. The officer said it looked like a half ounce of crystal shards. The criminal complaint that was filed said the drug field test confirmed that the shards contained amphetamine.

However, it turns out it was just a bag of vitamins prescribed to Burrell to treat a sore shoulder.
"I told the judge I couldn't plead guilty to something I knew wasn't a drug," Burrell said about a plea offer he received. "They set my bail at $250,000 for vitamins."

Sources:

http://www.mankatofreepress.com