ORLANDO, FL – An Orlando man says he was handcuffed arrested and taken to jail after a police officer mistook Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze for crystal meth.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, 64-year-old Daniel Rushing was pulled over for failing to stop as he left a 7-Eleven parking lot and speeding.
Rushing was asked to step out of the car after the officer noticed his concealed handgun license.
At that point, the officer spotted “a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were,” according to a police report obtained by the newspaper.
“I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic,” the officer said in the report.
Rushing tried to tell the officer that it was glaze from a donut, but to no avail.
After a positive field test for methamphetamine, Rushing was taken to jail.
Weeks later, state drug lab rest results confirmed there was nothing illegal.
Rushing is now asking for damages from the city, saying he was arrested for no reason at all.
“It’s a terrible feeling to go to jail when you have not done anything,” Rushing told WFTV.
On July 7, an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times showed how roadside drug tests send tens of thousands of people to jail every year even though they routinely produce false positive results.
Threatened with lengthy prison sentences, people arrested after a false positive often plead guilty to a crime before the evidence is scientifically tested.
