OT: (Follow-up) Sometimes Bird Poop Is Indeed Just Bird Poop
A couple days back, the board (and interwebs) had a good bit of fun at the expense of a Georgia Southern QB who was arrested and charged with drug possession after being pulled over by cops who then tested a white patch on the hood of his car, which supposedly came back positive for cocaine. The QB, Shai Werts, insisted it wasn't cocaine, it was bird poop.
Original post: https://www.mgoblog.com/mgoboard/georgia-southern-qb-arrested-bird-poop
But Werts was right: That substance wasn’t cocaine. On Thursday night, South Carolina prosecutors told local media that the drug case was being dropped.
“I was informed that the test did come back and that there was no controlled substance found,” Al Eargle, a prosecutor for the region including Saluda County, told the Savannah Morning News.
The kid ended up missing two practices while he was suspended, but his reputation is perma-stained on the internet, and that's a shame. Another angle to this story is the unreliability of field tests for drugs.
In 2016, the New York Times and ProPublica found that field-testing drug kits, which cost about $2 a piece, are wildly inaccurate. False positives can result from officer errors, the weather or poor lighting, and are so common that as many as one in three tests might come back wrong, The Post reported. Warnings from the Justice Department and crime labs about those problems have done little to slow the use of such kits by local police.
WaPo compiled a list of substances that tested positive for drugs in the field:
Here at The Watch, we’ve been keeping a running list of the items that have resulted in false positives on these field tests. That list includes sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiards chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers, Krispy Kreme donut glaze, exposure to air and loose-leaf tea. The latter item triggered a SWAT raid on an innocent couple and their two children.
OK, so Krispy Kreme is probably even worse for your health than cocaine, so that one may have done the user some good, IMHO.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:21 PM ^
Cops will face no consequences for retaliating against a guy who just wanted pullover at a lighted area, so not really a happy ending.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:37 PM ^
Absolutely. Complete incompetence (at best...I won't assume any sinister motives) by the cops. It's a shame that they put the kid through this ordeal.
Hey, poop happens!
There is a zero percent chance they actually thought bird poop on the hood of a car was cocaine. They should be fired if not jailed.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:26 PM ^
I feel like this thread will get a lot of traction in professional sporting circles.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:31 PM ^
Wouldn't cocaine blow off the hood while he was driving?
Not the good quality stuff, no.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:35 PM ^
Fuck birds (not all, mainly pigeons) and their disgusting poop.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:35 PM ^
Paid administrative leave coming right up!
August 9th, 2019 at 12:37 PM ^
Nah, you gotta kill someone to receive that benefit.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:47 PM ^
Such a waste of time and tax payer money. How these idiots have jobs while being so clearly incapable of doing their job is a shame.
Just doing God's work. With their arm sleeve tattoos and batman belts.
August 9th, 2019 at 12:54 PM ^
My favorite comment on the internet was someone who said he was a thug criminal and “there are 20-30 more just like him on his team.” If someone can extrapolate this from an article (I know, it’s really just their racism anonymously types), perhaps we can make a leap to say the cops were trying to get back at the young man because he wanted to make sure they didn’t kill him in a dark place for complying while black. Just maybe.
I like that tortilla dough and Jolly Ranchers are on this list. I guess I better clean out my car a bit better next time I go to a specialty market or something.
They could've at least tased the offending bird.
In Soviet Russia, cocaine tests positive for humans.
Doesn't cocaine come from the refined juice of eucalyptus leaves?
Ummm...no. You've been reading marsupial propaganda again. :-)
I read that wrong at first and thought you suggested that the officer should have tasted the offending bird poop. But looking at it now, that should have been done if they were so sure it was cocaine. Should have just put it on his finger and rubbed it all over his gums.
If he had, his gums would have matched his brains.
Shai Werts should have asked for a supervisor.
That only works in East Lansing.
Bird Poop story with the Prosecutor's last name being EArGLE.
Can't make this up. Conspiracy theory...
Thanks for posting the follow-up. Had just read the current Washington Post article before turning to MGoBlog. No fiddling around with the headline there either:
Anybody know what school is Georgia Southern's main rival? Can't figure out what other excuse for the officers to assume cocaine was on the hood of a speeding car... Unless they didn't go to school at all...
It was Appalachian st. I’m assuming that’s still the case
it was about.....'94/'95, I was pulled over on I75 just south of the Grayling exit. State trooper pulled me over (driving a company truck coming back from Chicago, about 7pm on a Saturday) I was speeding. My employer had just closed a sister company of our's down in Lk Bluff, IL.
To make a very long story (albeit a good one) shorter.. We were finishing up a mfg job that they started. I was hauling two, one gallon ziploc bags of ivory powder coat material because it was special order color and we needed to get it to the metal finishing company in Oscoda to complete the project. No, there was no box, label or anything else. The stuff comes in 25# and 50# boxes and all they had left was enough to fill two gallon ziplocs, the guy told me they actually got it out of the sprayer/hopper. In addition the truck was full of misc office quipment, job files, etc.
The trooper asks where i was headed and where i was coming from, asks who owns the vehicle I was driving and what year it was.... It's a company truck, I gave him the name of the company (but the truck is registered under a subsidiary)... He asks if there's anything in the truck that I wouldn't want him to find. I immediately laugh and explain to him that there are two bags of white powder, that probably look suspicious, but are nothing more than poly-powder coat. So the Trooper has me stand behind the truck, while he searches it, sure enough, out he comes with the two bags, which were in a WalMart back on the floor board in the back seat. Takes them to his car, comes back and no less than 4 times asks me what they are and where i got it from. I told him the same story, over and over and over. Told him I'd love to have him call the company I got it from or where it's going, but no one will be there on Saturday evening. Finally he calls a backup with a field test kit.
They confirmed it was nothing they were interested in and let me on my way with a warning for speeding.
Fun times.
At least their 20+ year-old field test actually worked.
Or did it...
Real cops know their dope and don't need a field test.
After it was all said and done.... This was a very young looking state trooper..... he was probably thinking he just made a major drug bust, between 5# and 10# of coke.... he was seeing promotions, his picture on the front page of the paper.....
Meanwhile, as this is dragging on and on.... I'm starting to wonder how difficult it would be for him to set me up.
all's well that ended well & its a good story. The owner of the company got a big kick out of it as well.
I listened to a podcast about some cop show on TLC that is supposedly more popular than any other similar show. They mentioned how these tests produce false positives.
For that show, they don't even care if it was debunked later. They still roll with it in order to get ratings. That show is supposed to be live but isn't.
I guy said he appeared on Cops. He said he was in the back of the car when a produced walked over telling him he better sign the waiver to appear on the show or he was going to jail. He told the cop what the producer said. The cop told him he better take the deal. The only thing worse than a cop is a cop on TV.
"False positives can result from officer errors, the weather or poor lighting, and are so common that as many as one in three tests might come back wrong"
Don't leave out that the officer can straight up lie about the results in order to get you to admit to something else that they can charge you with. They don't have to be truthful to you at all. So don't believe a damn word that they say.
I'm grateful that police are there to protect us from crazy people, But when it comes to my rights and freedom I wouldn't trust them any further than I could throw them.
Do you know anyone who is a cop?
August 11th, 2019 at 12:20 AM ^
More than a few.
Maybe it wasn't a false positive, and the bird just had a wild night out the day before.
/s
It was a blowbird?
And sometimes Dean DeRue wants to be sent to Bolivia (actually I agree with his letter, minus a poorly worded final sentence).
HEY. Krispy Kreme is awesome.
from a bostonian.
How the hell does this happen?
Anyone else think it’s funny the prosecutors name is Al EAGLE
I’m a staunch supporter of police...this is not a good look for those officers
How do you mistake bird poop for cocaine!? They smell/taste/look nothing alike. Trust me...
Semi-related, my company made a game called Dooky Dodge.
It's a fun distraction for a few minutes, but is not a big hit.
Why didn't someone just taste it?