We want to believe science works.
We want to believe science works. We watch police procedurals like CSI: and Law and Order expecting science to meet out objective justice, separate from the biases that come from police officers or DAs. And yet science can be wrong. It can be fouled, confused, altered or forgotten. Science is only as good as the system it fits within and the people within that system who have the knowledge and training to fully idealize it's purpose.
Field tests provide quick answers. But if those answers and confessions cannot be trusted, Charles McClelland, the former Houston police chief, says, officers should not be using them. During an interview in March, McClelland said that if he had known of the false positives Houston’s officers were generating, he would have ordered a halt to all field testing departmentwide. Police officers are not chemists, McClelland said. “Officers shouldn’t collect and test their own evidence, period. I don’t care whether that’s cocaine, blood, hair.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1468008368
Field tests provide quick answers. But if those answers and confessions cannot be trusted, Charles McClelland, the former Houston police chief, says, officers should not be using them. During an interview in March, McClelland said that if he had known of the false positives Houston’s officers were generating, he would have ordered a halt to all field testing departmentwide. Police officers are not chemists, McClelland said. “Officers shouldn’t collect and test their own evidence, period. I don’t care whether that’s cocaine, blood, hair.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1468008368
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