COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (KDVR) — Colorado has become the first state to pass a law banning an arrest based solely on a colorimetric drug test, a common tool used by police to identify suspected narcotics in the field.
The tests, which rely on chemical reactions that change color when certain substances are present, are widely used by police because they are fast and inexpensive. Officers can test a sample and receive results within minutes, but experts say the tests can produce false positives, leading to wrongful accusations and arrests in drug possession cases.
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Research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice estimates that about 30,000 people each year are falsely implicated and arrested due to inaccurate field test results.
One of those cases involved Holly Bennet, a 65-year-old woman from Commerce City, who said she was wrongly accused of possessing cocaine in 2022 while recovering from surgery in a hospital. She said when she woke up, an officer accused her of having cocaine in her purse…