Faulty Field Tests And Overblown Drug Raid Claims: The War On Drugs In Clay County, Florida

Legal Issues

from the serving-and-press-conferencing dept

Yet another Florida sheriff with a penchant for publicity is using his office (and manpower) to start some garbage viral War on Drugs. Hence, every bust made by his department — utilizing armored vehicles and deputies that look like they shop at military surplus stores — is splashed across the department’s Facebook page. Fine, if that’s what gets your blood flowing, but these scenes of busts, featuring the Sheriff front and center, contain claims that just aren’t backed up by the actual paperwork. George Joseph of The Appeal has the details.

The video finds Sheriff [Darryl] Daniels, who announces to the viewer that criminals must leave his county or face the consequences. The camera follows him to the house, briefly focusing on a broken window before Daniels opens the door. Standing in the raided home, Daniels takes a large swig of his morning cup of coffee and declares, “Fifteen going to jail, three big gulps.”

Despite the sheriff’s announcement, the “raid” resulted in only five adult arrests and one juvenile arrest, according to Elaine Brown, a lead records specialist at the sheriff’s office.

At best, maybe five will be going to jail. The sheriff depicts this as a raid on a “narcotics house” targeting opioids. The records obtained by The Appeal show no opioids were found during the raid. Four of the five adults were arrested for marijuana possession. The fifth was charged with MDMA and cocaine possession. But chances are those drugs might vanish along with the nonexistent opioids Sheriff Daniels proudly proclaims were taken out of circulation.

Note the line about the field drug tests performed. These have already been proven bogus. A sheriff’s office spokesman informed The Appeal that the 1.2 grams of heroin and fentanyl seized during the raid turned out not be opioids after being lab-tested. But the field tests told Sheriff Daniels everything he wanted to hear.

The reliance on cheap, terrible drug field tests is part of Sheriff Daniels’ drug-raiding tradition. Arrests and seizures sound great when you’re dragging a camera through someone’s house for a Facebook video, but when nothing holds up in court, you’re left with an empty charade using citizens as clickbait.

A former deputy contacted by The Appeal points out that cheap drug tests are just another tool for abusive police work.

“The really good ones cost money, but those take away your probable cause,” he said, referring to arrests and police searches for which error-prone drug test field kits can provide legal pretext. “It’s probably the cheapest ones they could get to do the minimum standards for an investigation.”

This same former deputy also pointed out the marijuana charges were trumped up. According to reports, 35 grams of marijuana were seized during the raid, but somehow two people are being charged with possession of more than 20 grams.

Cheap tests, cheap vicarious thrills, and a whole lot of hype over drug charges that will likely dissipate into minimal punishment (if anything) once the lab tests arrive. That’s how America’s drug warriors roll. Sheriff Daniels rolls a little harder than most, but that’s because tough-on-crime sheriffs are newscaster favorites. As The Appeal points out, Daniels has leveraged these videos to appear on national news networks and say ridiculous things like he’s planning to treat all drug overdoses as homicides.

This report points out some very unpleasant things about our war on drugs. Law enforcement officials may claim to recognize drug addiction as a sickness, but they’re still far more interested in rounding up users than dealers. Faulty field drug tests allow officials to exaggerate their successes (and misrepresent the amount of dangerous drugs in the community), when not allowing them to perform searches they otherwise wouldn’t have probable cause to perform. They’re part permission slip, part unpaid PR rep. And this constant failure of field drug tests to accurately identify drugs gets ignored but local media, for the most part, isn’t willing to follow up on high-profile drug raids to correct the record. And it keeps working because many Americans love the image of “tough on drugs” officers kicking in doors and waving guns around. But, far too often, “tough” just means dumb, brutish, and unconstitutional.

Filed Under: darryl daniels, drug tests, field tests, florida, war on drugs