Police arrested an Indiana man for driving a child’s toy while under the influence. James McKee was piloting a Power Wheels Jeep on a road in Vincennes, Indiana when a state trooper pulled him over for driving erratically and appearing intoxicated.
The driver then failed roadside sobriety tests and was taken to the Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was found to be under the influence of methamphetamine and marijuana. The 51-year-old was arrested, taken to Knox County Jail, and charged with operating a vehicle while impaired through intoxication. He has a previous conviction for a similar offense, and the charge was therefore increased to a level 6 felony.
Some of the most bizarre instances involving law enforcement happen on America’s roads. For example, in Oregon in 2010, a police officer got into hot water for physically detaining a man by pushing him to the ground and handcuffing him. The cop suspected the man of jaywalking, but a court ruled that the officer had no right to detain the suspect, much less with such aggression, because no crime was committed.
In 2017, cops pulled a woman over in Gainesville, Georgia, and found a spoon smeared with orange residue, which they said tested positive for methamphetamine. The driver insisted she had been eating spaghetti-os but was arrested and spent two weeks in prison before police discovered she had been telling the truth and the spoon was indeed covered in spaghetti-o sauce.
Annadel Cruz and Alexander Bernstein spent a month in prison in Pennsylvania when roadside drug tests determined they were carrying cocaine inside bars of soap. The tests were later proven wrong; the couple had only been carrying soap all along.
Police field tests are known to be particularly unreliable. In Las Vegas in 2020, courts overturned five drug convictions that stemmed from roadside sobriety testing by law enforcement officers. The tests cops use cost about $2, and growing numbers of courts refuse to accept their findings as evidence.
