JSO stopped using cocaine field tests Wednesday after finding they generate false-positives for common over-the-counter medications.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office will no longer use cocaine field testing kits after learning they return false positives for some common over-the-counter medications.
In a memo Wednesday, all JSO personnel were ordered to stop using the Scott Co. cocaine kits immediately and to return any unused kits in their possession. The memo says if an officer encounters a substance they believe to be cocaine, they will now need to submit it for formal testing by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab and seek a warrant at a later date if it tests positive.
“This does not exclude the officer from making an arrest on another charge,” the memo states.
Field test results are not by themselves sufficient evidence to prosecute a drug possession case. If a case goes to trial, the suspected drugs must be tested by an official law enforcement laboratory, like FDLE.
However, a positive field test is enough for an officer to make an arrest, and defendants often plead in drug cases rather than take the cases to trial. So it’s possible false positives have resulted in wrongful arrests and convictions.
It’s not clear how many cases — current or past — could be impacted. First Coast News asked JSO when the agency learned about the unreliability of the tests, how many cases could be affected, and whether it was confident in field testing kits for other drugs.
First Coast News has also asked the State Attorney’s Office about how many current criminal cases could be impacted, whether those cases will be dropped, and whether prior convictions could be subject to review.
Ian Scott, the owner of the cocaine test kit company, told First Coast News he learned of the issue from JSO midday Thursday but was not told they had stopped using the kits altogether.
“There was no mention to me of them discontinuing the product,” Scott said in a telephone interview. “The first I’m hearing about that is from you, unfortunately.”
Scott said JSO told him about the existence of the problem, but not its magnitude.
“I have no sense of the scale,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s been one case or five. But I can’t imagine it’s horribly widespread.”
Scott says the phenomenon of false positives has been a known issue since the test was developed in 1974.
“A false positive is not an unknown phenomenon with field testing kits,” Scott said. “I can articulate that there are some medications that are used in common allergy medications that can produce that result.” One chemical in particular, Diphenhydramine hydrochloride, sold under the brand name Benadryl, produces a false positive result.
Scott says that’s why the drug kits are not used to prosecute, just “to facilitate arrest and to help establish probable cause.” He said the risks of false positives are part of the free training his company officers law enforcement. He could not immediately say whether JSO requested that training.
