An Orlando man who was arrested after police officers mistook Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze for crystal meth has been cleared.
Daniel Frederick Rushing, 64, was arrested on a possession of methamphetamine charge after he was pulled over for speeding back in December, according to an Orlando police report.
During the stop, an officer noticed a "rock like substance" on the floor board of Rushing's car.
"I recognized, through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer, the substance to be some sort of narcotic," the report said.
According to the report, two separate field tests were performed and both came back positive for the presence of amphetamines.
Rushing was handcuffed, booked into county jail and strip searched, and it wasn't until a state crime lab did another test several weeks later that he was cleared, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
"It was incredible," he told the Sentinel. "It feels scary when you haven't done anything wrong and get arrested...It's just a terrible feeling."
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His arrest came after he had dropped off a neighbor at the hospital for a chemotherapy session, and went to give another friend, who worked at a 7-Eleven, a ride home, he said.
"I kept telling them, 'That's … glaze from a doughnut. … They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, 'No, it's meth, crystal meth,'" he told the newspaper.
His arrest report confirms that he tried to explain to police that he didn't have any drugs.
"Rushing stated that the substance is sugar from a Krispie Kreme Donut that he ate," wrote the officer who made the arrest, Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins, an eight-year department veteran.
In a statement to the paper, Orlando police said the arrest was lawful but didn't explain why the two field tests were wrong.
Rushing has hired a lawyer and is seeking damages from the city.
