Well, they say they ran tests. That’s still a live issue.
The first time they checked the trash they decided it wasn’t drug related material. I don’t think they even thought it worth testing.
The second time they say they did test it and it was positive. By a strange coincidence, the second rummage through the trash and the decision to test the material this time came 10 days before the pre-arranged press conference to announce the successful drugs busts.
They then needed another positive test to get a warrant so did another rummage a few days later (I mean, talk about the glamour of police work). Allegedly another positive test.
No forgery alleged, since there are no actual records of the test results.
There is apparently no expectation that police officers record the test results in any way (other than scribbling in their notebooks presumably) but one of the officers (Officer Burns) apparently stated that he did consider it good practice to photograph positive field test results and had done so in the past when considering whether he had probable cause to make an arrest at the roadside.
It was apparently not the force’s practice to photograph evidence at trash pulls (because they could just keep the evidence apparently).
They did take pictures of paperwork in the trash in order to be able to link the trash to the Hartes.
Another reason (as if one were needed) to make sure all identifying information is off anything that goes in the trash.
The material was retained and was tested by the police crime lab some four months later.
About four months after the search, and after the district attorney’s office told the Sheriff’s Office that the Hartes had complained about the search, Deputy Blake submitted the vegetation found in the Hartes’ trash to the county’s crime lab. Using the same brand and type of field test used by the deputies, the crime lab determined that there “was a peak for caffeine in the sample.”
A lab technician tested both tea samples from the Hartes’ trash and got two false-positive
results. But according to the technician, the leaves didn’t “appear to be marijuana” to the naked eye, and under the microscope they didn’t “look anything like marijuana leaves or stems.”
The Hartes retained their own expert to test four kinds of Teavana-brand, loose-leaf tea, the brand that Mrs. Harte had brewed in April 2012. For each test, the expert brewed the tea samples and then tested them on the same day. The expert used three different field tests: one was the exact brand and type of test that the deputies had used, the KN Reagent Lynn Peavey Marijuana QuickCheck Pouch. The second was a different test by the same manufacturer but with different reagents, the D-L Reagent Lynn Peavey Marijuana QuickCheck Pouch. And the third was a test by a different manufacturer using the same reagents as the test the deputies had used, the NarcoPouch Marijuana Test Kit #909 by ODV.
Using the KN-Reagent Marijuana QuickCheck test from Lynn Peavey, the expert obtained four negative results. With the Lynn Peavey D-L test, one of the teas falsely tested positive, two tested negative, and one sample wasn’t tested. Finally, using the NarcoPouch with the KN Reagent, the expert obtained three negative results, and didn’t test one sample. So just once did any of the brewed tea leaves test positive for marijuana.
