Sunday 13 March 2016

Crystal meth versus spaghetti sauce



Can you tell the difference between crystal meth and spaghetti sauce?

Apparently this was beyond the wits of certain members of the police force in Gainesville, Florida, in October 2014. As reported in the Gainesville Times, a woman driver was pulled over by a traffic cop who noticed a spoon on the shelf of the car. He immediately suspected that this had been used for the ingesting of crystal meth and promptly arrested the driver for a drugs violation.

The lady in question protested that she had never used drugs in her life and that the residue on the spoon was not methamphetamine but something far less harmful, namely a tomato-based spaghetti sauce from the takeaway meal she been eating shortly before she was pulled over.

One might assume that such a simple mistake could have been sorted out in double-quick time, but that is apparently not the way things are done in Gainesville. Instead, the driver was locked up in the county jail for six weeks while the crime lab performed its analysis and reported back.

When the report was made she was released without charge with her account of events being fully confirmed. However, that was six weeks of her life taken away that she would never get back – let’s hope that the Gainesville Police Department ended up paying her a substantial sum in compensation!


© John Welford

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