Atlanta officers Vladimir Henry & Juan Restrepo bust Ju'zema Goldring for sand-filled "stress ball", she spent 6 months in jail

[Democide]

Cops Thought Sand From Her Stress Ball Was Cocaine. She Spent Nearly 6 Months in Jail
And now an appeals court has ruled the cops who arrested her aren't entitled to qualified immunity from her lawsuit

16 November 2021

Add stress balls to the list of innocuous items that have landed innocent citizens in jail due to shoddy police work and unreliable drug field tests. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled last week that two Atlanta police officers are not entitled to qualified immunity from a civil lawsuit brought against them by Ju'zema Goldring for malicious prosecution. Goldring says the officers falsely accused her of jaywalking and cocaine trafficking, based on a field test of a powdery substance inside a stress ball she had in her purse. Goldring spent nearly six months in the Fulton ...

Cops Thought Sand From Her Stress Ball Was Cocaine. She Spent Nearly 6 Months in Jail.

And now an appeals court has ruled the cops who arrested her aren't entitled to qualified immunity from her lawsuit.

reason.com

 

[Democide]

No Immunity For Cops Who Used A Field Drug Test To Turn Stress Ball Sand Into Cocaine

24 November 2021

Getting probable cause is easy, especially when you have accomplices. Law enforcement loves drug dogs, which give them the permission they need to engage in warrantless searches. All a dog has to do is "alert"... or almost "alert"... or be presented in sworn testimony as feeling ways about an odor. Permission obtained. Searches permitted. Another favorite method for securing permission for seizures, arrests, and searches without a warrant is the field drug test. The tests are cheap, which makes them a popular law enforcement tool. They're also notoriously inaccurate. That also makes them popular with law enforcement. Cops aren't interested ...

No Immunity For Cops Who Used A Field Drug Test To Turn Stress Ball Sand Into Cocaine

Getting probable cause is easy, especially when you have accomplices. Law enforcement loves drug dogs, which give them the permission they need to engage in warrantless searches. All a dog has to do is "alert"... or almost...

www.techdirt.com

 

[Democide]

$1.5 million award for Ju'Zema Goldring

1 June 2022

A federal court has awarded Ju'Zema Goldring $1.5 million in a lawsuit Goldring brought against the city of Atlanta and two police officers. In 2015, the two cops stopped Goldring for jaywalking, then arrested her on drug charges, claiming that the contents of a stress ball Goldring had were drugs. Goldring spent six months in jail before prosecutors had the contents tested. The results were negative. Goldring claims the officers had performed field tests that also showed the results were negative, but that the cops had reported them as positive.

Brickbats: June 2022

News of politicians, police, and bureaucrats behaving badly from around the world.

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