Quick! Do you have a sock filled with kitty litter sitting in your car? We’re not going to ask why you’d have such a thing (that’s your business), but you may want to remove it, lest law enforcement mistake it for methamphetamine.
A Houston man says he wants an apology after police wrongly accused him of toting around meth, KTRK reports. He was charged with possessing almost a half pound methamphetamine after sheriff’s deputies found what they thought was a sock filled with the drug in his car in early December, with two field tests yielding positive results.
While two field tests on the questionable substance came up positive for meth, the charge was subsequently dismissed after a lab determined it was not, in fact, the illicit stimulant.
As for why someone might the carrying around socks filled with kitty litter, the man claims it’s a way to keep the windows from fogging up — a method we’ve never heard of or tested, but one that is popular on the internet — and that his father had left it in his car.
He doesn’t blame the officers who arrested him, however, and instead is pointing the finger at field tests. His attorney says “it might be bad budget-cutting testing equipment they need to re-evaluate,” adding that prosecutors were almost laughing when they told him the substance was kitty litter.
“I would like an apology,” the man told KTRK, claiming that the accusation caused him to lose work.” I was wrongly accused and I’m going to do everything in my power, with my family’s backing, to clear my name”
The sheriff’s office said in a statement that the man was stopped for a traffic offense, and that deputies detected a “strong odor” of marijuana coming from his car at the time. He was questioned, and admitted to having it in his console. While recovering the weed, deputies found the substance wrapped in a sock, but the man said he had no idea what it was.
“The deputies followed proper procedures and field tested the substance on two separate occasions which field tested positive for methamphetamines, notified the District Attorney’s Office who accepted charges for possession of controlled substance of 200 grams,” the statement reads, noting that the man posted bond and was released.
Authorities say that the driver failed to identify the substance during the investigation, but that he indicated on social media after his release that it was indeed cat litter.
“Regarding this incident all indication shows that the deputies followed basic procedures and followed established protocol related to this incident,” the sheriff’s office said. “Because of the established procedures in place this contraband was submitted to the Institute of Forensic Science and it was determined not to be methamphetamine and charges were dismissed.”
This isn’t the first time police have identified a non-meth substance as meth: in December 2015, police pulled over a Florida man and subsequently arrested him for a substance that officers thought was methamphetamine, but that turned out to be Krispy Kreme glaze from a doughnut he’d consumed in his car. He filed a lawsuit over the incident in Oct. 2016.
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