Posted on 07/11/2008 11:28:12 AM PDT by weegee
LAKE WORTH – The case against a teenager accused of delivering drug-tainted cookies to police crumbled Thursday after scientific tests revealed no traces of narcotics. Christian Phillips, 18, became a cookie monster and the butt of jokes around the globe following his arrest Tuesday after he left a basket of treats at Lake Worth police headquarters. Authorities said then that "field tests" they conducted on the cookies showed traces of marijuana and LSD. But lab tests performed by the Tarrant County medical examiner's office were negative for drugs, and Mr. Phillips – who had been charged with tampering with a consumer product – was released from jail shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday. The felony charge was dropped. Mr. Phillips, of Watauga, was facing up to 20 years in prison and fine of $10,000 if he had been convicted.
...
"These are the facts of the case, and if the lab says it ain't dope, that's what I'm going to go with," Lake Worth Police Chief Brett McGuire said.
...
"He got convicted before he got a chance," Mr. Davis said. "He got buried in the media. He has been derailed, and we need to get him back on course." Community service Mr. Phillips was delivering cookies as part of his 80-hour court-supervised community service following his arrest last year on charges of assaulting a police officer. That charge was reduced to simple assault, a misdemeanor, and Mr. Phillips was serving court-appointed community service with Mothers Against Drunk Driving when he delivered the cookies. That case was to have been dismissed on Wednesday if Mr. Phillips successfully completed his community service hours. He was about 10 hours away, his attorney said. On June 27, Mr. Phillips was videotaped delivering the snacks to Watauga police...
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Followup PING
Fire! Ready! Aim!
Who baked the cookies?
/johnny
54 hours in jail.
And he still needs to “complete” his 10 hours of community service.
And the police are still “of the mind” that he was guilty. Their noses and field equipment shall not be challenged, citizen. The quotes are there in this and another article that they are still “sure” of what the story is.
Or maybe just an apology?
/johnny
No good deed shall go unpunished.
The kid needs to sue for false imprisonment. No crime was committed and he was deprived of his liberty without cause.
Sure the taxpayers will be the ones taking the hit, but if they are burned badly enough, maybe they will start holding these idiots to a the higher standard they should be already holding themselves.
Assuming these "field tests" weren't a complete invention of "the authorities", I'd like to know exactly what these fields tests are, the frequency with which they produce incorrect positives, the number of people arrested because of these field tests, etc.
Of course, they'll never provide any of that. The cops will just drop it, act like it never happened and arrest the next chooch on the basis of their "field tests", which is probably just their belief that somebody looks guilty of something.
And he still needs to “complete” his 10 hours of community service.
Sounds like he served his time.
Chief McGuire said a preliminary field test conducted on the chocolate chip cookies by police detected LSD. A canine was brought in and indicated drugs were inside Mr. Phillips' car.
When he was arrested, Mr. Phillips was carrying a list of 25 police agencies in Dallas and Tarrant counties. Thirteen of the names had been checked off. Officers in some of the jurisdictions, including Fort Worth and Watauga, ate the cookies and reported no ill effects.
Lake Worth sent the cookies to the medical examiner's officer for a more thorough review. Officials there conducted more stringent chemical tests and a microscopic examination as well as tests involving gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.
Blue Mound police also sent cookie samples to the ME's office and those, too, came back negative for drugs.
But Blue Mound police Lt. Thomas Cain said Thursday that while he respects and accepts the medical examiner's report, he is sure he smelled dope on the home-baked Toll House treats.
"They did have a pungent, rancid odor," Lt. Cain said. "They did have the odor of marijuana. I got within two feet of it; I could smell it."
Blue Mound officers also conducted their own field test that came back positive for marijuana.
"How do you explain it? I don't know," Lt. Cain said.
Be very careful if you get involved with the Blue Mound Police Dept. If this is representative of their field testing for drugs, then every case they have been involved in needs to have a thorough going over.
They had an officer on CNN or something this morning stumbling over why the field test was positive but not the lab test. He didn’t sell me at all and then he tried to say that someone down the line might have come into contact with marijuana or something in the past. I heard that and went hmmm, doesn’t just about every dollar bill out there have some type of residue possibly then?
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed freepmail me or post a message here.
That case was to have been dismissed on Wednesday if Mr. Phillips successfully completed his community service hours. He was about 10 hours away, his attorney said.
sure doesn’t give me confidence in the ability of these field ‘tests’...
We will see. I will be asking the questions, though. It is my fair city, after all.
/johnny
Double baco cheesbuger...it's for a cop!
You know, I have thought about this myself, especially when coming back into the US from an overseas trip, and they have these drug-sniffing dogs come right up to you. I remember seeing them pull a young man out of line right in front of me one day. I was thinking can these dogs smell drug residue on any money I may be carrying? Hmmm?
That’s to bad. When I read this story the other day, the visual of a bunch of cops tripping face made me literally LOL.
Somehow, "community service" and working with this fascist / prohibitionist group don't seem to fit together.
As for this case, they tried him without any concrete evidence. Is this a view of the typical "guilty until proven innocent" police mentality these days?
Their story at the time was that they contact MADD and they were NOT delivering cookies to the police. Now they acknowledge he was serving community service for them.
Although I'm not really fond of most lawyers, I'd blame the cops for this one.
Wasn’t there some officer who “accidently” had some of his wife’s hash brownies last year?
Then there are all of the “false positive” collars on suspected “drunk” drivers.
Even the founder of MADD now speaks out against them as engaging in neo-prohibition.
yeah.
Somehow, "community service" and working with this fascist / prohibitionist group don't seem to fit together.
Wow, where did that hateful tag to this respected group come from?
The field test in that situation is entirely subjective (”you’re coming down to the station”). And in the case of P.I., there is no breath test. You are guilty if they say you are.
In court, it would come down to witnesses.
no. but there was a detectives wife who put weed in his homemade meatballs so he would get drug tested and caught and would retire.
Respected?? By who?!
It came from the woman who FOUNDED MADD, Candy Lightner.
She left in 1985 feeling that there had been a change in goals, from going after drunk drivers to going after any driver who’d been drinking.
Founder of Anti-Drunk-Driving Group Now Lobbies for Breweries
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: January 15, 1994
Legislators who knew Candy Lightner as the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving may be startled when they next hear from her.
Ms. Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunken driver in 1980, is now a lobbyist for a trade group representing breweries and restaurants — and her first project is working against state laws tightening the standards for drunken driving.
Good ole big D. I guess those cookies disappeared down a “black hole”??? LOL
"I DIDN'T DO IT! It wasn't me!!!"
Me, for one. Why not you? They do a much needed job pushing the cops to getting the drunks off the highways.
There’s a reason the 13th Floor Elevators didn’t record their legendary psychedelic albums in Big D. They kept getting hassled by the cops of there. And the substance wasn’t even illegal then.
They should have tested those cookies for his saliva or urine:)
Drunks and other drivers. Follow the money.
In the original story, these Texas law enforcement officials stated they could clearly smell marijuana from the cookies.
Dallas officials are now alleging the term "Black hole" is a racist term, now we have others arresting people for giving them cookies..
Is there something in the water there?
Oh yeah, and if he's forced to continue that, they'll be providing him with a fully stocked limo for transportation.
If I were him, I'd get the very best attorneys available.
The people he should go after is MADD. They are the ones that left him out to hang.
The article says he was held for “tampering with a consumer product” which tells me they were supermarket pre-made brownies”.
The cookies smelled “rancid”? That sounds more like spoiled butter than drugs.
This one should be blamed on cops, not lawyers. As for crime paranoia, I blame that on 24 hour news. Statistics show there is less crime than when I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, but when you watch the news you'd think we have a horrible crime epidemic like nothing we've ever seen. People don't even want to let their kids out anymore. I think the problem is that with 24 hour news they have to find something to fill all those extra hours with so they report on all sorts of crime we wouldn't have heard about a few decades ago. They beat it to death and create in us the perception that there is a bogeyman lurking around every corner.
Cops though kind of have to be afraid of getting their food tampered with. They eat more spit and other nasty stuff than most other humans because so many people hate them. I worked in restaurants throughout my teen years and I've seen some pretty nasty stuff go out to cops people didn't like. This kid was on probation for some sort of assault on a government authority figure, which could have been a cop or a teacher or someone like that. I might be a little concerned myself if I was a cop when it comes to eating food this kid prepared for me.
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