TAMPA (FOX 13) – Rebecca Shaw is not a criminal, but for months, she was treated like one. The mother of four — who didn’t break the law or do anything wrong — sat in jail for five long, agonizing months.
“It felt like my whole life was over. It was terrible,” Rebecca exclaimed. “My kids were devastated. I was away for five months. I cried constantly.”
Rebecca’s perfect storm of hell started when she ran out of gas on the road. A Pasco County Sheriff’s Office deputy pulled up behind her, but instead of helping her, he asked if he could search her car.
“[He] said, ‘What are these?’ Rebecca recalled.
She told him they were vitamins, but he apparently didn’t believe her.
“He said, ‘They don’t look like vitamins. They look like oxycodone,’” Rebecca continued.
The deputy pulled out a field drug test kit — kits used by law enforcement all over the country to detect illegal drugs. To Rebecca’s shock, the presumptive kit produced a positive hit for oxycodone.
Rebecca insisted the pills were vitamins, not oxy. But it didn’t help. “My heart just sank. I said, ‘That’s wrong!”
Rebecca was arrested, booked, and charged with trafficking oxycodone. With no way to pay a $5,000 bond she sat in jail. “It was scary being in there and having a public defender that didn’t believe me,” she continued.
After her husband was able to come up with the bail money, Rebecca waited another seven months for the state crime lab to confirm the pills were, in fact, vitamins.
The case was dropped but the damage had already been done, explained her new attorney Patrick LeDuc. “He does the field drug test and because it tests positive, nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter she had no prior record, it didn’t matter she was out of gas.”
FOX 13 previously conducted a yearlong investigation on the unreliability of field drug test kits and how they often get it wrong. Scientists showed us how household items like oregano, chocolate, and cough medicine tested positive for drugs, and how lives were turned upside down.
Despite all of that, law enforcement continues to use these faulty drug test kits and innocent people continue to pay the price.
“They’re putting innocent people in jail and ruining people’s lives,” Rebecca added.
Rebecca is considering her legal options, but so far, no lawsuit has been filed.
But, but, but, if you’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.
Isn’t that what our wannbe masters always tell us? LIARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It doesn’t say, but I’ll bet she consented to the search because she had “done nothing wrong & have nothing to hide”.
Even if you say no to the illegal search, which is most definitely your right, they will send for their K-9 (which will ALWAYS hit on the vehicle), and now they have their so-called “probable cause” and they will tear your car apart anyway. Land of the free, right? Just general comment on the search- not specific to anyone who commented.
Certainly there are kick-backs to keeping the jails full. Money and power are the great motivators to the “ruling class”.
I feel bad for this woman…that really sucks. Hopefully, her 2019 will be filled with court-ordered winnings from the Sherriff’s department!
Court ordered winnings from …. the Tax Payers
That be you and me
And I’m not happy about that one dam bit
Some duchebag pig or politician can create such a mess and just step aside of it with zero culpability or financial stake in the acts they perpetrated against their victim
And we get to pay for that?
Nah that’s a whole bunch of fuked up in my book
The REAL mistake here is the fact that the so-called ‘government’ has the stupid sheeple brainwashed into believing they (‘gov’) actually have the RIGHT to tell us what we can or cannot consume.
idiots