Interesting about there being enough water for at least one flush as I've never experienced that when water has been turned off for maintenance. What has happened is what I can only describe as a burble of water causing not even a half hearted flush of the toilet.
While I understand crack and meth are measured by weight, it would seem specimens of the toilet water could be taken and analyzed for the strength of the drug contained in the water.
Also, aren't there ways of testing to see if certain substances are present out in the field? I'm probably not making myself clear here but I've seen where certain drugs/chemicals are added to a liquid contained in a test tube will cause a color change. Are there ways like this to test for crack, meth, etc.?
Yes the drugs can be field tested, but that will only show a trace. If you get the sample out of water or any other place that could cause it to be contaminated lawyers will challenge your sample and test. Another concern is that a more reliable test must usually be done by the state lab, average turn around time approx. 1 lifetime. Once you start getting into expert witnesses talking about chemical compounds you can loose jurors. It only takes one. There is an old saying about going to court, if the law is on your side, pound on the law, if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts, and if the facts and law are not on your side pound on the table. You get one person out of twelve and it's a hung jury. We have currently an approx. 800 case back log, the Solicitor can't keep retrying cases. Please don't read into this that I am trying to justify all no knock warrants but alot more forces come into play on some of these decisions.