Article from The Daily Wire by Ashe Schow.
A Georgia woman is suing after spending months in jail for just this set of circumstances.
Dasha Fincher was pulled over on New Year’s Eve 2016 for her tinted windows — which the officers later admitted were perfectly legal. Fincher said Monroe deputies Cody Maples and Allen Henderson noticed an open plastic bag in her car and assumed the worst, even though she told them it was just blue cotton candy.
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But having a blue substance in a clear plastic bag still gave off alarm bells, so the deputies tested the bag with a roadside field test. They claimed the bag tested positive for methamphetamine, and Fincher was “arrested and charged with meth trafficking and possession [of] meth with intent to distribute,” according to Macon, Geogia, CBS affiliate 13WMAZ. Her bond was set at $1 million, and she spent months in jail because she couldn’t pay the cash bond.
Finally, in March 2017, a more comprehensive lab test came back and determined that the substance was not an illegal drug. Another four weeks passed before the charges against Fincher were dropped.
Read the entire article at The Daily Wire.
Image Credit: By Jamelle Bouie [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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The cops involved need to be fired and never allowed to work law enforcement ever again.City needs to cough up $1000 a day for every day of freedom she lost!!
I know it sounds bad, the circumstances, but the cops did what they were suppose to and the tests in the field came back pos. Maybe the equipment company should be sued. I certainly reach out to her for this mishap, and I do agree that a substantial amount of money should be paid to her, wipe her slate completely clean and give her a taxi ride home. I don’t know the circumstances of a job etc. so I can’t address that. At least the cops didn’t shoot her!
As an excop, I can tell you that you’re wrong Daniel. They had no business stopping her in the first place. She was breaking no laws. They didn’t see the blue candy until one of them came to the door and asked her for her credentials. They obviously didn’t really know how to run the test, and the candy should have been sent to the lab and tested the next day. Had they done that, it could have been treated as a mistake. Making her post that heavy of a bail was far and away more than should have been done. I’ve seen murderers given lower bail than that! Then they locked her up! I’m supposing she ‘s never had any criminal arrests before. What ever county in Georgia this was is in for at least several million dollars for their stupidity!
I agree about the cops needing termination and she does deserve some compensation. But the problem with these lawsuits is the money awarded to plaintiffs come from taxpayers (when the defendants are government agencies). It’s business as usual for incompetent agencies & departments afterwards.
You will find ignorant cops everywhere you go and then you will find a bunch of trigger happy idiots to.
Why didn’t somebody just TASTE it?