We have seen many, many dashcam and bodycam videos in the past couple of years, showing police officers going overboard when stopping drivers they suspect of something. But today we have a tale of a traffic stop gone very wrong – and a huge embarrassment for the officers involved…
Krispy Kreme Glazed Doughnuts: Could the company sue the authorities
if the masses stop eating Glazed Doughnuts for fear of being
falsely accused and arrested as drug users?
You may remember the rant I published some time back, about the women whose newborn baby was taken from her by Children’s Services after a routine blood test came up [positive for opiates. It turned out, after saner heads prevailed, that all the woman had done was eat a Poppyseed Bagel the night before she delivered and that popped the test. Now, researchers have developed a new strain of Poppy that produces seeds which don’t trigger opiate tests. So that issue is dealt with.
But we have only overzealous police officers – who may be too nervous or just downright too scared to act effectively in their duty – to blame for the incident we want to dissect today.
Just the facts, ma’am…
A 64-year-old Florida man was driving a fellow parishioner home from church in December 2015 when he was pulled over for speeding. The Cop who walked up to his window thought he saw crumbs of methamphetamine on the guy’s shirt and hauled arrested him for meth possession. The man also had a licensed gun, for which he had a legitimate carry permit, in the car at the time. Even though the gun was legal in every respect, the victim was charged with a gun offense, as well. H e driver was locked up for 10 hours before being released on bail. Finally, the charges were completely dropped.
Turned out the ‘meth’ was chips of sugar glaze from a doughnut the driver had recently consumed. The cops were red-faced.
The victim, Daniel Rushing, said he’s never even smoked a cigarette, much less done drugs of any kind. He took the matter to court claiming that county drug testing systems produced false positives 20 per cent of the time. He knew this, because he worked worked alongside the police as a parks department employee and had talked to them. Rushing was awarded (US)$37,500 in damages.
But… This case and its outcome calls many other drug bust cases into question. The drug testing kits the county in question uses is also used by many other police organizations across North America. If 20 per cent of the positives it produces are false… What a mess!
But back to the central issue…
Do we, as a society, stop eating Glazed Doughnuts to avoid false accusations and false arrest? This has repercussions for Doughnut Vendors, particularly Krispy Kreme, whose main product is Glazed Doughnuts. Would they be successful if they sued the maker of the drug tests and the police organizations who use them for any drop in sales for which there was no other demonstrable explanation?
Okay. You can apply as much satire as you want to this situation, but don’t forget the new mother whose child was take away. And don’t forget the fact that the drug test your local police service probably uses produces false positives 20 per cent of the time. Silly as it sounds out of context, it seems the right thing to do to warn my readers about the dangers of eating Glazed Doughnuts in the car…
~ Maggie J.