Oviedo, FL — An innocent man got a harsh dose of the incompetent police state recently after cops mistook his drywall for cocaine. He was subsequently kidnapped and thrown in a cage for months solely because of the ignorance of these officers and the faulty nature of their test kits.
To those who constantly say, “if you don’t want to get arrested, then don’t break the law,” consider the following.
In March of this year, Karlos Cashe was pulled over for a minor traffic ticket after he forgot to turn on his lights. However, it quickly went south after police saw drywall powder on his seat and floorboard and mistook it for cocaine.
Aside from thinking the innocent man had drugs, police also misread his terms of probation (for an unrelated drug charge years ago) and accused him of being out past curfew. However, hours later — after they arrested him — they realized they were wrong. But the false drug charges stuck.
During the arrest, police obtained a ‘positive’ result for drugs on the drywall using one of the known-faulty field drug test kits.
As The Free Thought Project has previously reported, the field tests, conducted by minimally trained police officers, are criminally flawed.
The $2 field drug tests, manufactured by The Safariland Group, have been proven to be unreliable. And according to the manufacturer, should not be used as a stand-alone test for convictions related to drug possession. But that’s precisely what happened to Cashe.
“I know for a fact (that) it’s drywall because I’m a handyman,” Cashe said. “I said that continuously during the arrest stop.”
As WFTV reports, a K-9 unit arrived at the scene and the dog alerted on Cashe’s vehicle and an Oviedo Police Department sergeant field tested substances he believed to be marijuana and more cocaine.
Both the dog and the kits were dead wrong. However, when those tests came back positive, Cashe was taken to the Seminole County Jail.
To make his unlawful kidnapping even worse, because he was accused of violating probation, he was denied bond.
“I sat there 90 days knowing I was innocent,” Cashe said.
After rotting in a cage for three months, a lab test eventually came back showing that there were no drugs inside Cashe’s car at the time of his arrest and he had broken no law.
Last week Cashe walked out of jail with no charges and has a new mission. He wants to raise awareness to make sure this injustice doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“This is what I want to stop,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”
Source: thefreethoughtproject.com
