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28 Responses to “Best. Excuse. Ever.”
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His excuse just went from suck to blow.
at least he didn’t say, ‘I never had sex with that woman.’ or ‘I tried it, but I didn’t inhale…’
All I know is, this does NOT work if she is drunk.
That is all.
Given that the half life of cocaine is less than one hour, he’s either lying about how he tested positive or he’s lying about not being aware of the extent of his partner’s habit. Because she would have to have been doing a LOT of cocaine, shortly before/during the activity in question for this (ahem) route of administration to be remotely plausible in pharmacokinetic terms.
Oh well, at least he shouldn’t have much trouble getting dates…
20 Quatloos says they got a false positive from his organic, non toxic underarm deodorant.
Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be able to lick that habit.
I gave it my best, but can’t come up with any clever “crack” jokes.
However, I did notice that this is yet another case of zero tolerance blowback.
Do I get partial credit?
I love how 70 corrupt buddies show up to try to get him freed. I’m sure they show up every time someone goes to court for such charges.
It’s odd – I thought that once you’re suspected of possession you get your door knocked down and all that…
Obviously, he got his crack while using hers.
What he said: “I got it from having oral sex with her.”
What he meant: “I got it snorting coke off her tits while she blew my lever.”
As funny as this is, i was a little disturbed by NY supreme courts remark that the drug test was somehow voluntary.
What planet are these guys on? Your boss says take a drug test…what are you gonna do? Say no? Yeah right
Headline: Gateway Drug Found on Slippery Slope
Well, either way it’s pretty solid.
Scenario A: You get yourself a cocaine-using LEO. Not to hard to be jubilnat about that one.
Scenario B: You get yourself a LEO who’s been subjected to the abasement of false positives. We get a renewed distrust of pseudo-scientific processes that errouniously affirm our preconceived prejudices.
Hooray!
And sooner or later, the whole thing ends up on Cracked…
I hate myself.
Another career pissed away.
Is that a coke in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
VERY interesting point, Capo.
“Rakower ruled that even though the appeals court put a stop to hair tests in December 2007, Goldin’s firing must stand because he voluntarily cooperated with the drug test and allowed hair samples to be taken from his arm.”
In every job I’m aware of, failure to cooperate with a drug test mandated by an employer leads immediately to termination.
He may have been a crappy cop, but this was also a crappy way to get rid of him.
I’m kind of split on this.
If this guy is telling the truth about being a straight edge punker, any one with an inkling of the scene knows straight edge punks are dogmatic about their lifestyle. To the point that the straight edge/hardcore scene got pretty violent over it’s core issues, especially in the late 80′s and early 90′s and so on. But these are not overtly racist, immoral, ethically challenged people. Well, maybe a little ethically challenged but they ain’t die-hard right wing, Constitution busters. They’re a little more left wing with their Constitution busting.
Fuck, stranger things have happened.
Whatever you think, he won’t be flying high anymore.
I actually feel a bit sorry for this guy. If you’ve got sensitive enough equipment, you can detect a trace of just about anything, doesn’t mean he was using. I read somewhere that just about every bank note in circulation is contaminated with detectable traces of cocaine, from being in the cash machine with notes that have been used for snorting. So theoretically, anyone could be fired for carrying drug paraphenalia in the form of a contaminated bank note.
Soooo…suddenly it’s an issue when a cop is busted and has HIS life turned all fuckywobble by an test that may or may not be reliable and is railroaded by a system that judges that, regardless of all contrary evidence, you MUST be guilty…welcome to our world buddy.
No sympathy as he has been an active participant in a system that does that on a regular basis to us “ordinary” folks. One would think that situations like this would make SOME cops pause and go….”hmmmmmmmm”…..but I think that the irony and the possible lesson to be learned here will be completely lost on those who should be having little “idea light bulbs” going off over their heads in the cartoon version of this story.
Did anyone consider the possibility that she was using the cocaine vaginally? Bueller?
@paul: “If you’ve got sensitive enough equipment…”
…it feels great to rub coke on it before doing it! Hey yo!
I don’t know 70 people that would be willing to testify that I’m not the queen of England. Yet, cops get 70 buddies to testify he absolutely doesn’t do coke…as a single guy in NYC…at punk concerts…with a party-girlfriend who he’s nailing every other day…who happens to do coke.
One more point: nice journalist work here by the daily news. They answered all the Journalism 101 questions and a couple follow-ups that were obvious. I wish they’d hold a seminar for NYT/WaPo/Globe and about 800 smaller papers.
If he puts his arm around his girlfriend, do we arrest him for possession of paraphernalia?
I’ve never seen him drink coffee or drink booze at bars either. I also have a rock in my hand that keeps away tigers, and you won’t see any tigers here in my office.
Is this even scientifically plausible?
#23
He could have been Mormon/LDS. That makes it even more appropriate! But, he may have just been a “Punk” religion follower. “Religious” people who think not drinking coffee, or any other “vice” makes them better than anyone else, need to be knocked down a few levels. What goes around comes around! Now he faces his own type of judgment, ever flawed that it may be!
Maybe he should look up LEAP! Maybe they could help him identify the literature about false positive testing and the destruction of the lives of innocent people. He should feel real stupid about now, if he was truly not a user! He needs a lecture from LEAP, too! At least, they acknowledged their hypocrisy, and changed their ways!
Let’s take him at his word and believe him. This now illustrates the folly of the “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” line of reasoning.
Say he did nothing wrong. That is no antidote for the Kafkaesque bureaucracy he now finds himself in. That’s why we have privacy: because who’s to say that life (or “government,” in this case) is fair.
If there is any poetic justice, my guess this officer has no doubt used the “if you’ve done nothing wrong” line hundreds of times in the course of his duty.
@ #24–I alluded to this already (#4), but I’ll expand on it a little. The typical “NIDA 5″ drug tests used by most employers have detection limits such that if you abstain from anything for which they test (except cannibis) for about 72 hours, you *probably* won’t come up positive. (More sensitive tests do exist, and this may have been a case of that. But they aren’t that much more sensitive.)
Cocaine is rather rapidly metabolized (half life is less than one hour in most people). I don’t know if anyone has looked at how much cocaine or its metabolites are eliminated from the body by sweat or vaginal secretions, but I’m willing to bet (quite a lot) that it is a small fraction of what is excreted in the urine.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I find it really, really unlikely based on what I know about pharmacokinetics.
Someone also brought up the possibility that his partner was using the drug vaginally. This would make his story more plausible, except for the part about him being unaware of her habit (his mouth would get rather numb.)
Some have brought up false positives etc. Since the test was a hair test, it’s much less likely to have a false positive (gas chromatography etc). Additionally, the likelihood of xfer of enough coke to a) make it into his system and b) have metabolites stored in arm hair by c) having oral sex with this woman…is pretty damn low. So I definitely am in the “I call bullshit, I don’t care how many cops vouch for the guy” camp. He found a couple of lifestyle enhancements, and was dumb enough not to research what testing methodology he might be up against (urine, he’d be in the clear as long as he restricted this stuff to evenings with a couple days off in between, e.g. friday night – hair, all bets are off unless you shave everything constantly).
Heh, and rereading the story – “He would no more use drugs than the man on the moon.” Uh, which man on the moon is that, David Bowie?