Cop Mistakes Donut Glaze For Meth, Driver Arrested, Strip Searched

Follow CBSMIAMI.COM: Facebook | Twitter
ORLANDO (CBSMiami) - An Orlando man may want to switch is snack of choice to brownies or moonpies.

As for glazed donuts they're definitely out.

Last December, Daniel Rushing dropped a neighbor off at the hospital and then went to a 7-Eleven where a friend worked so he could give her a ride home, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

While there he bought a Krispy Kreme doughnut and then they headed out.

As he was pulling out of the parking lot, he was pulled over by Orlando police Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins who was staking out the area because of complaints of drug activity.

According to her report, she pulled over Rushing because he failed to come to a full stop leaving the parking lot and he was allegedly doing 42 mph in a 30 mph zone.

When she asked to see his license and registration, Riggs-Hopkins reportedly saw that Rushing, 64, had a concealed weapons permit in his wallet. When Rushing told her he had a gun in the car, she asked him to step out and that's when things took a strange turn.

When looking in window of Rushing's Chevy, the officer noted in her report that she spotted "a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were." she wrote.

When asked, Rushing said he gave Riggs-Hopkins and several other officers permission to search his car because he had nothing to hide.

That's when they found three other pieces of 'suspicious' substance in his car.

Riggs-Hopkins noted in her report that Rushing told them the 'suspicious' substance was really just glaze from his Krispy Kreme donut.

Apparently, she didn't buy it.

"I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic," she wrote.

The officers did two roadside drug tests and both came back positive for the illegal substance crystal methamphetamine, according to Rushing's arrest report.

He was handcuffed and taken to jail where he was strip searched. He was then charged with possession of methamphetamine with a firearm. After being locked up for ten hours, he was released on $2,500 bond.

Several weeks later, he got some good news.

A state crime lab performed another test on the substance found in his car and cleared him. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the crime lab didn't determine what the substance was, only that it wasn't illegal.

Three days later the charge against him was dropped.

Rushing has since hired a lawyer and plans to sue the city for his wrongful arrest.

The Orlando Police Department has not said why the two drug field tests that Riggs-Hopkins conducted were wrong.