[antonymoose]

Reminds me of a case that just popped up in my neck of the woods.

Man gets pulled over on an expired plate. They search based on this fact, find a pill bottle (for Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and magically find he’s trafficking cocaine and fentanyl.

Months later a lab test exonerates the poor guy.

https://www.wyff4.com/article/deputies-falsely-identify-ibs-...

[bloomingeek]

I've always maintained one of the worst things that can happen to you is sitting in court before a jury of your peers, because most can't comprehend the meaning of the law outside of their feelings. NOW the worst thing is having yourself in the hands of cops who just don't give a damn or became a cop for the use of power.

[JuniperMesos]

This one seems pretty reasonable - according to the article, the cops pulled him over for swerving lanes (driving unsafely on public roads in a reasonable thing to want to police), and then discovered that he was driving on a suspended license, which he admitted to (it's reasonable to have a system for suspending peoples' drivers licenses that is enforced by the police). The police find the pill bottle and don't believe him when he tells them it's a legitimate drug, then "conduct[..] multiple field drug tests, which produced a positive result for fentanyl. Getchius was taken into custody and transported to the Greenwood County Detention Center. Shortly after, another drug test was completed and returned positive results for cocaine."

So it wasn't just the pill bottle, it was multiple other drug tests. I think you could make a reasonable argument that drug use shouldn't constitute a crime in and of itself - although it probably should if you're driving a car, for legitimate traffic safety reasons, I don't find DUI laws objectionable. Or you could make an argument that the criminal justice system shouldn't interfere with peoples' decision to use and sell drugs. I'm sympathetic to this myself, but I think especially in the case of opioids like fentanyl, the situation where government paternalism makes it illegal to sell opioids probably discourages enough destructive use of these drugs by unwise or already-addicted people that it's still net-positive in terms of human welfare. I suspect a society where it was simply legal to use and sell opioids would have a lot more human suffering in it than our own (possibly because in the absence of laws banning open opioid dealing, people who are close to severe opioid addicts might simply commit vigilante murders of suspected opioid dealers, and be left unconvicted by sympathetic juries). And once you hold the position that it's legitimate for the government to legally restrict the sale and use of these drugs, then you necessarily have to have something like police and something like a criminal justice system that investigates whether a person might be actually using and selling opioids and then lying about it.

The fact that the guy was in fact once addicted to some drug and "was working at rehab and addiction centers in Florida at the time of his arrest." is additional evidence that he might have returned to drug use, and there's no way to make cops who investigate opioid-related crimes not think this.

[mwigdahl]

If a field drug test can confuse an irritable bowel syndrome drug for fentanyl or cocaine, it is not reliable enough to be used for law enforcement purposes. The same applies to facial recognition tech. We need real information on the false positive vs false negative rates for tech that purports to establish identity or criminality.

[1123581321]

The test didn't confuse the drugs. He tested positive for fentanyl and cocaine. They accused him of trafficking drugs in addition to that because of the IBS pill bottle.

It's an unfortunate story because it sounds like he was having relapse trouble, and the cops were predisposed to do the worst to him that they could (mis)justify, when he needed to cool off and then get back to the professionals helping him with recovery.