A Commerce Police Department officer has been put on paid administrative leave following an arrest based on an inaccurate roadside drug test. This test wrongly identified a legal substance in a man's car as the potent drug fentanyl, according to internal investigations and reports from FOX 5 Atlanta.
The incident has cast a harsh spotlight on the reliability of such quick tests and the policies surrounding their use, after Private First Class James Motley was apprehended when returning to base. Purchased shortly before from Carmax, his Chevrolet Cruz bore temporary tags that did not appear in a national database, prompting the stop. His journey to Fort Polk, Louisiana, was abruptly halted at a Commerce truck stop when Officer Cody Wood, compelled by the impulse to dig deeper, flagged the vehicle in the early hours. According to a FOX 5 interview with Motley's mother, Shana Plazio, "James would never have any drugs."
During the search, a Spring Valley Melatonin bottle was mistaken for containing fentanyl based on Wood's readings from two roadside drug tests. Even Commerce Police Chief Ken Harmon personally tested the melatonin, obtaining a similar false positive result, which led to the eventual dropping of charges against Motley, a fact noted in articles from both FOX 5 Atlanta and Yahoo News.
The Commerce Police Department, responding to the flawed test and subsequent fallout, has ceased all usage of these roadside drug test kits. Not an isolated incident, these kits have frequently been trusted by Georgia police departments to the point of causing numerous wrongful arrests – a University of Pennsylvania School of Law study cited by FOX 5 purports nearly 1,000 Georgians fall victim to such errors annually. In detailing her son's ordeal, Plazio said to FOX 5, "They sit in jail for who knows how long and their lives are completely flipped upside down for nothing!"
For the broader implications, this case poses a grave question regarding the reliability of swift field testing in drug-related cases and the underlying policies, or lack thereof, that guide such law enforcement practices. MMC International, manufacturers of the contentious drug field test, sent a statement to the FOX 5, stating that their tests "always require a lab analyzing test" and that they are intended as "a first quick tool" but must be corroborated by accredited laboratory analysis unless they should never constitute conclusive evidence in court. As further recounted by Plazio and presented by the conducted research, the over-reliance on such preliminary tests can drastically alter lives, even as officers test every item with a vigor unsuited for the certainty such arrests demand.
