"It used to be marijuana or something else. Likewise, if the NIK colorimetric test for methamphetamine is presumptive the same colorimetric test would be a presumptive test for 'Equal,' the sugar substitute. researches product purchases and suppliers. The effects of synthetic marijuana on an individual can vary widely. Investigators suggested Hernandez killed Odin Lloyd because he didnt want information about his bisexuality to become public knowledge. "They had this paperwork and knowledge that I wasn't allowed to possess for two years, and they made me suffer the consequences.". So the apparent silence on the extensive the use of synthetic marijuana use in U.S. prisons is curious to me. The BOP then expunged the violation from Blaisure's record, making his lawsuit moot. It is sold legally as incense or spice at head shops. What Is K2? Drug Believed To Be Sickening Prison Employees - YouTube And this is the rub of Steffey's argument in his lawsuit. Aaron Hernandezs tragic death spotlighted a serious problem with synthetic marijuana in prisons. It's common in the world, so there's a variety of substancessome of which we know, but some of which we don't knowthat are going to possess this group and allow this color test to produce a color.". In 2013, Travis County, Texas, stopped accepting guilty pleas for low-level drug possession before official crime lab results came in. I know its costing us in terms of overtime and paper, Meyers said. Liquid K2 is the latest contraband problem for Nebraska prisons, jails Category: Liquid K2. Fincher sued the Monroe County Sheriff's Office and Sirchie, but a federal judge dismissed the suit in May 2020. ", This is why Sirchie's webpage for the NARK II test specifically warns, "NOTE: ALL TEST RESULTS MUST BE CONFIRMED BY AN APPROVED ANALYTICAL LABORATORY! He hung himself by wrapping a bed sheet around his neck and tying it to a bar on the window of his cell. In 2017, Steffey was serving a nine-year sentence at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Lompoc, a low-security federal prison in California, for his role in an online identity theft ring. I'll pay my own money to have it sent to a lab.". The New York Offices of the Inspector General declined to comment on the investigation. The problem is twofold. ", After spending two years going through the Bureau of Prisons' grievance process and appealing his disciplinary sanctions, fruitlessly, Blaisure filed a petition in federal court in July 2016 seeking to restore his lost good time credits. "Atoms can combine together in groupswe call them functional groupsand these color tests are simply looking for the presence of a particular group," Harris says. At the Douglas County Jail, which houses an average of about 1,200 inmates, all mail not from lawyers is now checked and copied, with the photocopies given to inmates. NARK only tests for the possible presence of certain chemical compounds., I refuse to believe that every defense attorney in Massachusetts is suddenly a drug dealer.. The move followed the discovery of a dozen false positives linked to field tests. The judge ruled that Fincher hadn't shown that Sirchie's product was defective or that the company had failed to warn law enforcement officers of the tests' shortfalls. Ive also seen it where lads have dropped down dead, had heart attacks, gone into comas, gone loopy and ended up being sectioned because of it.. We have special a4 K2 infused paper for sale. The searches turned up what prosecutors described as an "unusually large amount of drugs" including K2, cocaine, meth, and items clearly too bulky to mail in like marijuana, bags of pills, jars of alcohol and 74 cell phones. The court held a lengthy evidentiary hearing, where it became clear that the local district attorney's office frequently used NIK test kits as evidence to obtain grand jury indictments, despite a number of innocent people having been indicted and clear warnings from Safariland that the tests should be verified. Inmates then smoke or ingest pieces of the soaked paper, or sell it to other inmates. Subscribe to this blog to get an email every time a new post goes live! "That was really tough on me," Steffey says. Inmates then smoke or ingest pieces of the soaked paper, or sell it to other inmates. Now it's K2.". All rights reserved. Synthetic weed Department of Correction sources confirmed a wide-scale investigation was underway at the prison, as well as a warehouse used to store dry goods before they went into the prison. Some of the popular K2 liquids papers are Bizarro k2 liquid on paper,K2 Liquid On Paper Diablo k2 liquid spray on paper, Cannabinoid-C liquid spray on paper, K2 spice-infused . You can buy the infused A4 plain paper and write a letter to send to your buddy in prison. Almost no one else ever does. A tablet system will allow almost all inmate communications to be conducted virtually, without paper, thus eliminating the need to screen snail mail and books. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Strange Bedfellows Oppose Improving Maines Food Sovereignty Law, Peter Bagge and Charles Oliver You have permission to edit this article. This paper is odorless and colorless. If synthetic marijuana is popular in your region, help spread the word of the dangers and misconceptions about this drug. The footage shows the officer performing a NARK II test for methamphetamines, which turned dark red instead of blue, indicating a negative result, according to the manufacturer. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Officials say the prisons in the Huntsville area have been the source for the majority of the K2 busts in the past two years, though it is turning up elsewhere. Liquid K2 is the latest contraband problem for Nebraska prisons, jails. On December 4, 2014, he says, a correctional officer confiscated his pouch and tested its contents for drugs. Meyers said smugglers figured out that it was easy to set up a small-business account on Amazon so they could ship books, sprayed with K2, to inmates. Whenever we close a pathway, they find a new one.. Smuggling K2 into prisons is done by a variety of methods, but visitation is the primary method. "It seems like it would be simple enough to prove my case, but no one will listen because no one gives a fuck about what happens to inmates," Steffey says. Reactions may occur with, and such compounds can be found in, both legal and illegal products.". All of these steps were taken based on flawed physical evidence. In 2016, an Arkansas couple spent two months in jail after a sandwich bag of baking soda in their truck tested "positive" for cocaine. He said his agency always works to educate inmates and give them better alternatives, such as social activities, to seeking out K2. Coffee grounds also turned the solution in NIK Test A a dark brown, although it was unclear whether that was the result of a chemical reaction or just the color of the grounds themselves. Chemists cooking up these substances are tinkering with the molecular structure to skirt DEA regulations, says Frunzi. Another guy thought he was God and that the end of the world was coming, slobbering and acting like a five year old. Months ago at the Ferguson Unit, a state prison north of Huntsville long known as one of Texas' tougher lockups, a convict doing 30 years for drug trafficking "flipped out" and started yelling and swinging wildly at correctional officers and other convicts. The problem of drugs and alcohol and other contraband in prisons is age-old, he said. The problem is that really, you don't know what's in them. Paul covers state government and affiliated issues. "A methamphetamine test might be targeting a functional group that is present on methamphetamine," Harris says. He's saying that the tests don't provide reliable positive or negative evidence in the first place and that untrained BOP staffers are misusing and misinterpreting the tests. Some defendantsfacing an extended stay in jail and threats from prosecutors about the sentences they'll get if they turn down a dealplead guilty to crimes they know they didn't commit. Mr. With the right tools and strategies, correctional leaders can protect their employees and catch contraband smugglers without radical policy changes that can trigger expensive lawsuits. But inside, incarcerated people are at the mercy of bureaucracies even more strongly tilted against them. Home - Chemicalmedshop K2 Spice paper, k2 paper, mamba paper either way it's so strong it will . Interactions with innocuous chemicals commonly found in paper frequently create false positivesalmost 80% of the time, according to one DOC officials estimate.. "You get furloughs to go home and see your family. 4.28.2023 4:45 PM, Matt Welch Sale! All rights reserved. But its worth it if we avoid a bad outcome if someone overdoses.. Steffey says he got on the bad side of a couple of correctional officers, who began regularly searching his cell and generally making his life difficult. Do Not Sell My Personal Information. The New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, a union of state correctional workers, told local news outlets that DOCCS found there were false-positive results with the testing kits being used to identify contraband drugs. The Houston Police Department discontinued the use of drug field tests in 2017. One third reported using Spice in the previous month. "Inmates who were penalized for contraband drugs have been released from special housing units and their records were expunged,"The Auburn Citizenreported last August. Courts give wide latitude to prisons to manage their daily affairs and security, and that extends to prison disciplinary hearings. In 2018, the Superior Court of Imperial County, California, ruled in the casePeople v. Chaconthat unverified NIK tests were not admissible evidence in grand jury proceedings. Take steps to catch contraband Suboxone and synthetic marijuana to keep your COs safe and your facility secure. He isn't saying that NIK tests are producing false positivesthat is, incorrectly indicating the presence of drugs. "They have seizures; get super high. Writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rich Lord described the K2 problem at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution Huntingdon. Inmates have figured out novel ways of smuggling the drugs in, such as lacing paper with liquid K2. All rights reserved. Fearing the potential of severe consequences, some people incarcerated in Massachusetts Department of Correction facilities are starting to refuse correspondence altogether, forcing attorneys to drive long distances to hand-deliver court documents and other important communications to their clients. "One of the many examples of the NIK testing errors was a case where heroin was identified using a NIK colorimetric test and a second Valtrox colorimetric test," the court wrote in its ruling. Correctional officers can never be too vigilant with their searches when it comes to contraband, especially when it comes to the mail. Once, prison screeners found K2 concealed in a baby's diapers on a visitation day. Meanwhile, low evidence standards make it just about impossible for federal inmates to challenge the results of these tests in court. "K2 is the new drug of choice, inside and outside of prison," said Bruce Toney, inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the detective force that busts illegal activity inside Texas' 110 state prisons - the nation's largest state-run system. "That's not going to give you a reliable result.". Prisoners are tested for illicit drugs such as heroin and marijuana, but the standard urines tests dont screen for the metabolites from synthetic marijuana. C.J. Steffey is a former federal inmate, and a "shot" is federal prison slang for a disciplinary infractionas in, "They gave him a shot." At the Nebraska Corrections Department, Frakes said a surge in K2 issues earlier this year might have been associated with inmates receiving COVID-19 stimulus checks, and thus having extra money to spend. The BOP submitted pictures of the papers as exhibits in Steffey's lawsuit, but they are too low-resolution to read. Sirchie did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Efforts to thwart smuggling range from prohibiting book deliveries to a postcard-only policy to providing scans or copies to inmates rather than the originals. The Legislature made K2 illegal in September 2015. But Steffey says the current system gives correctional officers an easy way to gin up shots against inmates. Liquid K2. The staffer noted that the papers felt "unusually thick" and gritty and looked discolored. In December of that year, a BOP mailroom staffer opened a package "of what appeared to be unfilled legal work" addressed to another inmate. There is no parole in the federal prison system, so accruing good time credit is one of the only ways that inmates can shave time off their sentences. With endless amounts of time and little fear of consequences, inmates are smoking nonstop.. Why Easter cards were rejected in Indiana prisons this year In October of 2015, BBC News reported how investigators concluded the use of Spice in an Oxfordshire prison contributed to an increase in violence. Investigators believe that large amounts of K2 come from the Houston area because it is an overseas importation point. | Smugglers got even more creative after corrections officials took steps to screen mail and limit where books can be obtained. Drug Believed To Be Sickening Prison Employees Explained By Addiction Expert CBS Pittsburgh 114K subscribers Subscribe 36K views 4 years ago An addiction expert says he doesn't understand how. "That's how [these tests] were integrated into forensic science in the first place, to be followed up with confirmatory tests," Harris says. Copyright 2023 Corrections1. Blazing Blueberry 5ml After waiting six or seven weeks, he asked about the results. This means that a presumptive positive for amphetamines in NIK Test A would be confirmed by NIK Test U by default. It has had a negative impact on my health and my family, as any accusation against Mr. Ivey was effectively an accusation that I committed a serious criminal offense.. "One guy was on the floor in a medical emergency.