Unreliable Drug-Test Kits and State Crime Lab Backlog Create Problems in Florida

A Florida circuit judge and other law enforcement officials are investigating the backlog at the state’s crime lab and serious problems with drug testing kits police use in the field. False positive results have led to lengthy incarcerations for people waiting for lab tests to accurately identify the substances.

“We have men and women sitting in jail languishing if they cannot make bond awaiting that scientific testing that should be performed immediately,” Hillsborough Circuit Judge Gregory Holder told television station Fox 13. The tests to confirm the nature of the substances often take months.

Judge Holder says the group of law enforcement officials needs to determine the reason for the lengthy backlog at the state crime lab. In February, for example, a military officer was arrested because a field drug test showed a pill in his possession was meth. The test result was incorrect, but it took the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) nearly five months to do a lab test on the pill and clear the man’s name. “Injustice pretty much sums it up perfectly,” Judge Holder told Fox 13. Judge Holder said the state cannot expect law enforcement officers to test substances in the field when there is no evidence to support the reliability of the test kits they use.

Fox 13 conducted its own 6-month investigation of the kits. Results repeatedly showed the unreliability of the test kits. Fox reporters witnessed researchers in a forensics research lab testing substances with kits and coming up results indicating illegal drugs for such substances as aspirin, cough medicine, coffee, and oregano. Even an air sample tested positive, Fox 13 reports. Law enforcement officers nationwide use these drug-testing kits to testing suspicious substances before making an arrest. Judge Holder says he’s appalled by the situation and says there must be a better way to handle the testing. According to Holder, FDLE has too few lab technicians to handle the load of confirmatory drug testing and so the tests often take many months to complete.

Public defender Julie Holt, State Attorney Mark Ober and others have joined Judge Holder in pushing for funding for additional lab techs so testing can be completed in a timelier fashion. Holder told Fox 13 viewers they would be wrong to think the testing problem does not affect them and their families. “[I]f it affects any human being then it affects us all,” Holder said.

 

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