Video: Man Falsely Arrested When Cop Mistakes Doughnut Glaze for Meth

In December 2015, an Orlando man was arrested when doughnut crumbs in his car tested positive for meth.

The cop who made the arrest, Orlando Police Corporal Shelby Riggs-Hopkins, recently resigned because of the incident, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

Riggs-Hopkins arrested Daniel Rushing, a retired city of Orlando employee, during a Dec. 11, 2015, traffic stop when she spotted several white specks on the floor of his car, according to his arrest report.

At the time, Rushing told the cops the substance was bits of glaze that had fallen off a doughnut, he told Channel 9 back in October 2016:

“I said, ‘That’s icing from a Krispy Kreme glazed donut and they went, ‘No, that’s drugs.”

Riggs-Hopkins told the internal affairs investigator that she spotted a “rock like substance on the floor board” and suspected it was crack cocaine, reports the Orlando Sentinel:

“I recognized through my 11 years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic,” she wrote in Rushing’s arrest report.

Rushing said he continued to explain that the substance was sugar:

“I kept telling them, ‘That’s … glaze from a doughnut.’ … They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, ‘No, it’s meth, crystal meth.’”

The officer did a series of roadside drug tests, but got two of them wrong. She cuffed Rushing and hauled him off to the Orange County Jail, where he was strip searched. He spent about 10 hours there before being released on $2,500 bond.

Several weeks after the arrest, a state crime lab confirmed the substance was sugar, and the charge against Rushing was dropped.

According to a new report, Riggs-Hopkins was given a reprimand for making a false arrest.

Rushing is understandably upset about the incident, as he told Channel 9,

“I have never even smoked pot in my life, or have done any drugs. It just really makes me angry.”

Law enforcement consultant Chuck Drago said that a field test can be wrong, which is why officers should look for additional evidence to justify an arrest. He added that a supervisor should have questioned the arrest report.

Back in October, Rushing explained his ordeal to Channel 9:

Rushing has filed a lawsuit against the city and the manufacturer of the drug kits.

So much for cops being doughnut experts.

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