The Florida Sheriff’s Office is halting the use of cocaine testing kits due to concerns about false positive results

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has stopped using a particular brand of cocaine field testing kits after more than a decade because an investigation by one of its investigators found the kits may produce false positive results.

According to local news outlets in the area, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office asked all officers to immediately stop using the test kits after a detective learned that several over-the-counter medications caused the test kits to return positive for cocaine.

JSO officials issued a statement on the matter Thursday, saying they have never had any reason to suspect any problems with the Scott Company’s field testing kits and that the kits’ results are preventive, meaning there is one Arrest came.

“Many law enforcement agencies in Northeast Florida and across the country have used and have used Scott Company’s cocaine field testing kits for many years without any problems or incidents,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “These kits were used solely as presumptive field tests and not for evidence in criminal proceedings. JSO uses other testing kits for other controlled substances.”

The Sheriff’s Office immediately notified all legal staff in the area whose litigation may have been affected by the poor results of Scott Company’s field test kits. Prosecutors met with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday to discuss the impact of the incident.

“We immediately informed the District Attorney’s Office, the Regional Conflict Counsel, the Chief Judge and the local Criminal Defense Association of this development,” said David Chapman, spokesman for the District Attorney’s Office. “We are conducting a thorough review of potentially affected cases to determine what actions need to be taken in the future to address this issue.”

Scott Company CEO Ian Scott issued a press release on Friday about the situation, saying that any claims that their tests were flawed were completely false and that the media portrayal that the tests were anything but suitable for the purpose for which they were developed is due to a lack of understanding of how the tests work.

“The assumption that our A-2 Scott Cocaine Reagent Cocaine Residue Swab product is ‘defective’ is inaccurate. The reagent test has not been designed, designed, manufactured and/or sold in a manner that is defective, unreliable or inaccurate,” the press release states. “Since its introduction in 1974, the chemical reaction that ensures the product works as intended has always done what it was designed to do – detect the presence of cocaine, within the chemical laws that govern its reactions.” . We strive for complete transparency and respectful recognition of the limitations of the chemical laws to which the product is subject.”

The Scott Company’s press release goes on to say that their tests used reagents that react in a specific way in the presence of certain substances. However, he said, it is virtually impossible to test a reagent against everything that could potentially cause it to react because there are millions upon millions of known chemicals. For this reason, their tests should be used on-site, along with the arresting officer’s judgment and later confirmed by further laboratory analysis.

“While presumptive testing is highly reliable, faster and less expensive than other testing methods, under certain conditions it is possible (although unlikely) to obtain a false positive result when certain substances are introduced into the presumptive test,” the release said said. “We strongly advise individual officers and relevant authorities to use common sense and assess the totality of the circumstances before making an arrest.”

The Scott Company outlined in a ten-point summary why it believes false positive results for cocaine from a list of randomly selected over-the-counter drugs is not a scientifically sound approach to labeling its tests flawed. They pointed out that there is no single presumptive field test for cocaine of this type that would give a positive result for cocaine and only cocaine. The Scott Company also noted that the coatings on many of the drugs used in testing could have resulted in a false positive result.

“Please also note that no litigation to date, either against us or related to our customers’ use of our products, has resulted in a decision in favor of the plaintiff,” the press release states.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had not responded to Scott Company’s claims as of this writing. The Scott Company website claims that its products are used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide.