Orlando Man Arrested After Police Mistake What Man Says Was Doughnut Crumbs for Illegal Drugs

Police say arrest was lawful because substance tested positive in field test.

ByABC News
July 28, 2016, 3:53 PM

— -- A Florida man who was arrested for alleged drug possession says that what police thought was methamphetamine was actually just glazed doughnut crumbs.

"It's a terrible feeling to go to jail when you have not done anything,” Dan Rushing, 64, of Orlando, told local ABC affiliate WFTV. "I just don't want this to happen to somebody else."

He said police found the crumbs of his biweekly Krispy Kreme treat in his car and mistook the icing flakes for drugs after he was pulled over for a traffic violation.

"Every other Wednesday, I stop at Krispy Kreme and get a doughnut there, and they found little — four little flakes of the icing," Rushing said. "They said, 'We found what we thought was crack cocaine in the beginning, but now we think it's methamphetamines.'"

He told ABC News today that he had just dropped his friend off at chemotherapy when he was pulled over by the police. "They said, 'Would you mind if I search your car?' and I said, 'I don't have anything to hide.'"

"Then they said, 'Well, do you want to tell me about anything illegal in your car?'" he said. He said he told them he had no idea what they were talking about, and then they produced four doughnut crumbs "no bigger than your thumbnail."

"I kept telling them that's from a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut," he told ABC News. He said the police officer insisted that it was drugs and that it had tested positive as a controlled substance with a field kit.

"I said, 'I don't know what to tell you about your test, but I don't even know what methamphetamines are,'" Rushing said.

He said he was then arrested, jailed for 11 hours, strip-searched and denied his spinal injury medication, which he needs to take every six hours.

"I'm not mad at this officer, but I just don't know where her judgment was," Rushing said.

He said that he has retained an attorney and will be filing a lawsuit against the police department. "The sad thing is I'm finding out a lot of people have gone through this all over the country. A lot of these tests are giving false positives," he said.

According to the Orlando Police Department incident report, Rushing was pulled over after going 42 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour zone and not stopping before entering a roadway.

The police officer, an 11-year veteran of law enforcement, wrote in the report that she observed "rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were," and that she believed the substance to be "some sort of narcotic."

She conducted two field tests, and both of both came back positive for the presence of an amphetamine, according to the incident report, which also noted, "Rushing was placed under arrest and charged with possession of amphetamine with a weapon." Rushing had a permit for his .38-caliber revolver, but it was confiscated because under Florida statutes, it is unlawful to carry a weapon while in possession of a controlled substance.

The evidence was submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for further testing, Sgt. Wanda Miglio of the Orlando Police Department told ABC News today. The results for the FDLE test were negative, so no charges were filed against Rushing by the State Attorney's Office.

She emphasized that the arrest was lawful, "meaning that, based on the officer's experience and the field drug test that came up positive, probable cause existed to make a lawful arrest."

Miglio added that the "the substance was not, in fact, found to be Krispy Kreme flakes. FDLE testing just determined it wasn't a controlled substance."