First In The Nation Reform Bill Limiting Unreliable Drug Test Arrests Signed By Polis

By C.J. Ciaramella | Complete Colorado

DENVER–Colorado recently enacted a law protecting criminal defendants arrested due to roadside tests for drugs, becoming the first state in the country to recognize widespread instances of wrongful arrests due to police departments’ use of often unreliable field drug kits.

Both chambers of the Colorado legislature unanimously passed House Bill 26-1020, and Gov. Jared Polis signed it into law on March 26. Under the new statute, police can no longer make arrests solely for misdemeanor drug possession based on the results of what are know as “colorimetric” field drug tests and instead must issue suspects a summons to appear in court. The act also requires courts, before a defendant enters a plea in a case where a field test was used, to inform defendants of the known error rates for the tests and their right to request testing from a forensics laboratory.

The first-of-its-kind law is part of a growing bipartisan recognition of a problem that news investigations and lawsuits have documented for years: Police officers’ use of unverified drug field tests is inevitably resulting in innocent people being arrested, jailed, and prosecuted.

The colorimetric problem

This type of test kit uses color reactions to indicate the presence of compounds found in different narcotics. Several different companies manufacture them, and they’re popular with police departments because they’re cheap and portable, allowing officers to test suspected drugs on the spot and get results near instantaneously. But the problem is that the compounds the kits test for are not exclusive to illicit drugs, leading innocent people to be arrested for innocuous items. Over the years, police officers around the country have jailed innocent people after drug field kits returned “presumptive positive” results on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton candy, and sand from inside a stress

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