Lance Lowry, president of a Huntsville union that represents correctional officers, recalled one shift a few years ago when he was working in an Huntsville-area prison. Lexipol. We used NIK Test A, and it was positive, so don't come bother us. Inmates across the country are dying from K2 overdoses - Vice In July 2020, he was among the thousands of federal inmates granted compassionate release by federal judges because of the COVID-19 pandemic. "One guy was on the floor in a medical emergency. Because the BOP does not require NIK tests for contraband to be independently verified, it's impossible to say how often it happens, butReasonfound at least one case where a federal inmate was punished based on the results of a NIK test that was later invalidated by a crime lab. Synthetic marijuana, often referred to as K2 or Spice, is a catch-all term for lab-created variants of THC, the chemical in marijuana that causes a high. Correctional officers can never be too vigilant with their searches when it comes to contraband, especially when it comes to the mail. Last year in Georgia, a college football quarterback was arrested after bird poop on his car tested presumptive positive for cocaine. Suboxone, which requires a doctors prescription, comes in a small strip that goes under the tongue and slowly dissolves. It was scary.". On the street, the same liquid in many areas sells for $100 or more an ounce, officials said. "When confirmatory testing is done by the Department of Justice [in] some Grand Jury charged cases there turns out to be no controlled substances," the court noted. Heather Harris is an assistant professor of forensic science at Arcadia University who trains future chemists to use these color tests. The last thing an inmate wants to do is to test positive for any of these substances, so a substance that you don't believe is going to have a positive drug test is very attractive.. The testimony inChaconalso established that the term "presumptive positive," as used by law enforcement and prosecutors, was largely meaningless, since the tests can't discriminate between illicit substances and the dozens of known licit substances that also trigger color reactions. Copyright 2023 Corrections1. Basinger said the measure is necessary to prevent liquid K2 from entering the prison system. You can buy the infused A4 plain paper and write a letter to send to your buddy in prison. I talked to one dude and he said he hit it and he started rapping. Fentanyl isnt the only drug to watch out for in jails and prisons. NARK II products havepreviously been accused of flagging herbal male enhancement productsandcotton candyas meth and breath mints as crack cocaine. So far, no prison deaths have been attributed to K2 in Texas, authorities said. It is labor-intensive. Not only was he concerned about how the K2 accusations would impact him, McKenna was worried about his client. The Bureau of Prisons uses drug field tests manufactured by Safariland. Similar cases abound. Corrections1 is revolutionizing the way in which the corrections community finds relevant news, F rom shanks to . The NIK Color test for heroin does not meet any recognized forensic scientific standard.". Joker E-Liquid Vanilla Flavor(Mild Potency) 5ML - K2 Liquid Spray He says it took him about four years to work his way down to that security level, and he was three months away from a possible transfer to a minimum-security federal prison camp. Its cost on the street: about $20 an ounce. A spokesperson for the DOCCS says the agency "is reviewing its current procedure for the testing of suspected contraband drugs. On the recreation yard at dusk, clouds of smoke appear over the bleachers from all the people smoking K2. Best Spice Paper Worldwide. The New York Offices of the Inspector General declined to comment on the investigation. The k2 has been marketed as herbal incense, or "herbal smoking blends", and sold under common names like K2, Spice, and Synthetic Marijuana. It took eight or nine officers to get him under control.". "The prisons have really gone off on their own to use it as this kind of one and only definitive test for whatever punishment or other purposes they're using it for. Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Home - Mega Bud Store "We tested it three different times out of two different kits to make sure that we weren't having any issue, and each time we got a positive for controlled substance," the Fort Chaffee police chief told a local news outlet. It is sold legally as incense or spice at head shops. ( 5 customer reviews) Buy Cannabinoid c-Liquid 5ml Online - Wholesale K2 Paper Online. Enter https://www.corrections1.com/ and click OK. At the Douglas County Jail, a new prevention tactic is coming soon, Meyers said. 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. After he exhausted his appeals within the BOP bureaucracyall deniedSteffey filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court in January 2019. "Charging between $10 for just an inch square of K2 up to $500 for a full sheet of K2," he said. Theyve been using almost exclusivelyor, I think, actually exclusivelyon legal mail, Ellen Leonida, a partner at the firm BraunHagey & Borden and one of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit, said of the presumptive drug tests. Although it doesnt pose the same respiratory failure risk that fentanyl does, unlike fentanyl Suboxone is very easy to absorb through the skin. Prison police say they have also recently busted wives, cousins and children of convicts - even a grandmother - for trying to smuggle K2 into East Texas prisons. "The relevant question is whether there is any evidence in the record that could support the conclusion reached by the disciplinary board.". So, if one were to accept the logic proffered by the People that the NIK heroin test is presumptive positive for heroin it would also be true that it is a presumptive positive test for chocolate. In a second article, McPhee said verifying the presence of K2 in Hernandezs system led to a State Police raid at the Souza Baronwski Correctional Center (SBCC), the prison facility where Hernandez died. Cannabinoid c-Liquid 5ml - K2 Liquid Spray Crime:his role in the slayings of five people during a 2002 bank robbery attempt in Norfolk; he shot and killed bank employees JoMausbach and Samuel Sun and customer Evonne Tuttle. But police across Texas have continued to report continuing issues with K2 overdoses, including among homeless people. Nebraska prisons are implementing a similar system. Sometimes the drugs are mixed with ink or crayon wax and delivered as handwritten mail or childrens drawings. Shop. While the eternal spiritual state of his soul cant be known with any certainty, what is known for sure is there was K2, a form of synthetic marijuana, in him when he died. Early Wednesday morning on April 19, 2017, Aaron Hernandez was found dead in his prison cell. Here, like the U.S. prison in Forest City Arkansas, the drugs mostly come into the prison is as throwovers tossed over the prison wall. Crime:1993 murders of Brandon Teena, 21, Lisa Lambert, 24, and Phillip DeVine, 22, in a farmhouse near Humboldt; the story of the transgender Brandon was fictionalized in the film Boys Dont Cry.. Let's see the test. You let it in, you bring it in. He would not have done anything to jeopardize that, and a serious disciplinary offense like the one he was wrongly accused of could have resulted in the parole decision being revoked, the lawsuit alleged. "I had been in the HVAC apprenticeship program for four years, and I was risking losing all that over this faulty NIK test kit," Abarca says. Meyers said the Douglas County Corrections Department experienced an epidemic of liquid K2 problems a couple of months ago, with evidence discovered almost every day and inmates found completely out of their mind, high. A couple of inmates were hospitalized for overdoses. Contraband Suboxone and synthetic marijuana come in many forms, and inmates and their associates are endlessly inventive when it comes to smuggling them behind bars. researches product purchases and suppliers. Liquid K2 on Paper. Sirchie did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When a federal judge ordered the BOP to respond to Blaisure's claims, the government lawyer preparing the response found the nearly two-year-old results of the Jefferson County Regional Crime Laboratory's test of the contents from Blaisure's pouch: "No controlled substance or dangerous drug identified," the lab had concluded. Second, if an inmate is caught with synthetic marijuana, it is a relatively minor offensea 300 series incident reportequivalent to illicit tobacco possession. 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.. It has become the most comprehensive and trusted online destination for correctional professionals nationwide. The smugglers also set up Amazon vendor accounts to ship reading materials laced with the drug to inmates. Then another dude smoked some and crawled under the bunk. The state holds onto the originals for several days in a secure location before destroying them. The kits are screening tests that help the user determine what a substancemightbe. Reasonbought two packs of field drug tests and got positive results for several common, legal substances. In yet another case, an incarcerated man named Julian Green accepted legal mail from the Boston College Innocence Program in 2019, though the parcel was taken away for testing and came back positive for K2. A variety of tools can help minimize the risk to corrections staff as well as keep contraband out. Copyright 2023 New York's prison system suspended the use of similar tests last summer because of such worries. Harris says the dyes and other chemicals in paper make it unreliable for color tests. In recent months, numerous state and federal prison officials across the U.S. have acknowledged growing problem in their systems with K2. Another guy thought he was God and that the end of the world was coming, slobbering and acting like a five year old. You have permission to edit this article. The investigator linked the package to Steffey after finding an email sent to him that included the tracking number of the package. K2 is an extremely dangerous drug that requires only a piece of paper the size of your pinkie to get high, according to Mike Chipman, who heads the union that represents state corrections security staff. He said: Ive made mistakes, but I dont deserve this.. He told me he never rapped in his life, but that was all he could do to not lose his mind. If synthetic marijuana is popular in your region, help spread the word of the dangers and misconceptions about this drug. K2 spice spray is also called K2 spray. 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. In December of that year, a BOP mailroom staffer opened a package "of what appeared to be unfilled legal work" addressed to another inmate. With endless amounts of time and little fear of consequences, inmates are smoking nonstop.. This form of K2 is much harder to detect than traditional leafy K2 products that look more like marijuana. He also made red ink marks on his hands and feet, mimicking the stigmata of the crucifixion of Christ. Of the 950 contraband busts inside Texas prisons between January and mid-June, 477 involved illegal drugs - and 268 of those, more than half, were for possessing K2, according to state statistics. identifies important training information, interacts with each other and By the time Green ultimately received the legal communication, it was unreadable. A series 100 offense could result in 60 days in Disciplinary Segregation (the hole), or the loss of good time, commissary, or visiting and phone privileges for up to one year. NARK only tests for the possible presence of certain chemical compounds. The inmates used. Blaisure has reason to sound proud of beating the rap. Harris says the over-the-counter cold medicine Benadryl can produce positive results in field tests for several types of illicit drugs. Subscribe to Reason Roundup, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of news, delivered fresh each morning. But tens of thousands of incarcerated people in the U.S. are subjected to it for months, sometimes years, at a time. ", 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! In prison, inmates often demand to see each other's paperwork to verify what they're in for and whether they've snitched. Prison has a strictly enforced social order, and sex criminals, especially those whose crimes involve children, are at the very bottom of itshunned at best. When we got locked down this guy went totally crazy. The Open Secret of K2 in Prisons | Faith Seeking Understanding A November 2016 article in The Daily Mail described a documentary, the Secret Life of Prisons, that said drugs (particularly Spice) are widely available. K-2 is a synthetic marijuana product in liquid form, and was recently reported to be responsible for 90 overdoses in. Steffey is a former federal inmate, and a "shot" is federal prison slang for a disciplinary infractionas in, "They gave him a shot." In October of 2015, BBC News reported how investigators concluded the use of Spice in an Oxfordshire prison contributed to an increase in violence. California Dreams Liquid Terms Of Use, A Home-Based Baker Shouldn't Have To Choose Between Her Dog and Her Business, Biden and Congressional Democrats Support Policies That Will Undermine Their Own Clean Energy Goals. Corrections1 is revolutionizing the way in which the corrections community finds relevant news, Incredulous readers may roll their eyesprisons are full of both drugs and liarsbut hundreds of botched cases across the country have raised serious concerns about law enforcement's reliance on these types of test kits. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled inSuperintendent v. Hillthat the BOP needs to show only "some evidence" to support a disciplinary sanction revoking an inmate's good time creditsa far lower bar than both the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that applies in criminal court and the "preponderance of evidence" standard used in civil cases. He voluntarily dismissed his 9th Circuit appeal in December. Notoriously faulty drug tests are coming back with false positives after screening prisoners' legal mail for the synthetic cannabinoid K2, according to a lawsuit filed against the Massachusetts'. One man began to dance around like a ballerina. Best Spice Paper Worldwide. Writing for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rich Lord described the K2 problem at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution Huntingdon. One Texas corrections official declared K2 the new drug of choice, inside and outside of prison," in 2017. K2 Spice Paper - Liquid K2 on Paper 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. Kratom Meang Da Liquid Incense 5ML - K2 Liquid Spray "I was like, you guys are crazy. Prison security screening | Smiths Detection The Massachusetts Department of Correction allegedly uses a test called NARK 20023 from Sirchie's NARK II product line. As a result, prisoners are allegedly being given solitary confinement, losing visitation privileges, or facing other punishments. Nebraska Corrections, for instance, now bans shipments of books from Amazon and restricts purchases to one company, Edward R. Hamilton, which specializes in providing reading materials for correctional facilities. All rights reserved. Steffey has put out a YouTube video demonstrating that a plain piece of paper will yield a burgundy result. LINCOLN A new form of easily concealed synthetic marijuana is causing increased work, as well as concerns about overdoses, increased assaults and staff safety, at jails and prisons in Nebraska. "It used to be marijuana or something else. Six staff members were caught smuggling drugs, including. 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. In general its disorientation, inability to stand or think straight, lack of control of one's limbs, etc.. Brett Blaisure was incarcerated at FCI Beaumont, a federal prison in Texas. Going through the mail piece by piece places a huge drain on staffing resources, as COs have to inspect each piece. The fact is, even if Steffey is lying about his own conduct, he's right about the unreliability of these field tests. When youre this short (of staff), it really limits your options, he said. Before that, authorities said it was even harder to bust anyone - even convicts - for possessing it.

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