Corrupt Las Vegas PD Continues To Use Faulty $2 Drug Field Tests Because Convictions Matter More Than Justice

The War on Drugs has never really been about eradicating illegal drugs. It's been about putting up numbers: seizures, busts, indictments, convictions. A steady flow of illegal drugs into the country ensures a steady flow of tax dollars into hundreds of government agencies. Officials talk a lot about taking down cartels, but they spend more time grabbing cash from travelers and anything they can from someone who's got nothing more on them than quantities that could be generously called "personal use."

Making law enforcement's Drug War "efforts" easier and a whole lot cheaper are field drug tests: notoriously unreliable chemical cocktails that are worth every cent of $2/per they pay for them. In an earlier story about these tests, two New York Times journalists detailed Amy Albritton's experience. Albritton spent three weeks in jail after a false positive from a field drug test determined that the caffeine-and-aspirin "crumb" (roughly the size of a "grain of salt" according to the lab test) was crack cocaine. For $2, Albritton lost most of her life. She served her short sentence -- one she only obtained by pleading guilty -- and now faces a future where her permanent record shows she's a convicted felon.

ProPublica is also tackling the issue of cheap, unreliable field tests -- ones deemed just reliable enough to cost people their lives. The Las Vegas Police Department's own crime lab found the field tests used by officers to be so inaccurate they actually lobbied to have their use discontinued.

In a 2014 report that Las Vegas police submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice under the terms of a federal grant, the lab detailed how the kits produced false positives. Legal substances sometimes create the same colors as illegal drugs. Officers conducting the tests, lab officials acknowledged, misinterpreted results. New technology was available — and clearly needed to protect against wrongful convictions.

The lab's opinion didn't matter. Cops and prosecutors loved the field tests. It ensured a steady flow of busts and convictions.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161103/14011635959/las-vegas-pd-continues-to-use-faulty-2-drug-field-tests-because-convictions-matter-more-than-justice.shtml

Corrupt Las Vegas PD Continues To Use Faulty $2 Drug Field Tests Because Convictions Matter More Than Justice

Corrupt Las Vegas PD Continues To Use Faulty $2 Drug Field Tests Because Convictions Matter More Than Justice

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order