Besides, in a case like this, the police don’t need probable cause or reasonable suspicion or even a hunch to perform the test. The cookies were given to them.

Perhaps, but if one performs twenty searches based on “probable cause” and only five turn up something, just how “probable” was the “cause”? While the Constitution doesn’t give an exact mathematical definition for “probable cause”, ordinary English usage would take it to mean “more likely than not”. That would suggest a probability over 50%, though that doesn’t necessarily mean over a 50% success rate. Going zero for three would not imply that one didn’t have a better-than-50% probability on each try; even with a 53% chance of success on each try, one would go zero for three about 1/10 of the time.

Even though an officer who goes zero for three might simply be having bad luck despite having probable cause, there’s a limit to how far out that works. If an officer makes 100 searches, each with a 50% chance of success, he should get at least 38 successful searches 99% of the time. If he doesn’t manage 38 successes, he very likely didn’t have probable cause. If he doesn’t manage at least 26, he almost certainly didn’t have probable cause (failing to get at least 26 heads out of 100 flips of a balanced coin would be a one-in-a-million shot).

I’ve seen a field test used on COPS, kinda like from CSI. The officer took a vial with some chemical in it, added the substance in question (can’t remember which), and waited for the color change. Kind of like those pH test strips we used back in high school chem.

As far as the smell goes, dried sage smells extremely close to marijuana when it’s burned. So I guess that could possibly explain the odor reported by the officers. Now…why someone would put sage in chocolate chip cookies is beyond me…

I was watching a British “Cops” show last night. Officers came up to a belligerent guy on the street and started TALKING to him. Clock keeps ticking and I’m waiting for the officers to administer the inevitable beat down……….nothing. They just calmly walk him over to the police car, put him in un-cuffed, and hold him until he calms down. Crazy! :P

Also, why is it that these field tests police use turn up so many false positives?

As David (#19) pointed out, cracking skulls and locking up bodies is their job. When you have subjects, rather than customers, there’s very little incentive to err on the side of civility. All of the other details are just side-effects of this lack of negative feedback.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I have ever been in the presence of a baked good with marijuana baked into it!”

I can completely and authoritatively confirm it in my own case.

“But the answer is: NO”

That is entirely correct.

Is that some weird drug slang? The powdery material inside drywall board is gypsum, not chalk.

That would be your upper lip there, LT.

What a bag of jerks.

stay tuned..

Edintally- you get bonus points for properly using ‘Bogarting’ in a sentence… about made me snort Dr. Pepper outta my nose!

My guesses would be that they don’t clean or calibrate their testing device properly, so they keep getting positives on residue from drugs that have been tested; that the sensitivity equipment the buy is skewed to “err on the side of caution”, that is, better to have a false positive than a false negative; The testers themselves are crap (much like many of the the “lie/guilt detection” tech marketed to law enforcement) and police depts. have happily purchased something that’s too good to be true.

Since they goal is making arrests for their own sake, they have little incentive to get things right.

I can neither confirm nor deny that I have ever been in the presence of a baked good with marijuana baked into it!

But the answer is: NO

Now shut up and pass the plate you bogarting bastard! :)