Pennsylvania Police Are Being Sued For Arresting A Kid For Possessing Homemade Soap That Looked Like Cocaine

MCall- According to a 2013 criminal complaint, a state trooper stopped the Mercedes' driver, 26-year-old Annadel Cruz of New York, on westbound I-78 near the Cedar Crest Boulevard exit because she was approaching 60 mph in a 55 mph zone and was riding a traffic line for about a half-mile.

When questioned, Cruz told the trooper the car was a rental and they were driving from New York to Florida. The trooper told her he smelled marijuana and she said she had smoked earlier in the day, but not in the car. She gave police permission to search the car.

According to the police report, Bernstein told police he had a bag in the trunk and gave police permission to search it. In the bag, the trooper found two brick-size packages, which were covered in clear plastic wrap and red tape.

Cruz told police the packages contained soap she had made for her sister in Florida, but a field test showed that the substance was cocaine. The packages weighed 5.2 pounds. Police said they also found a small amount of marijuana in Cruz's bra.

The couple were charged with possession with intent to deliver cocaine, possession of cocaine, conspiracy and possession of drug paraphernalia. Cruz also was charged with possession of a small amount of marijuana, disregarding traffic lanes and speeding.

In the lawsuit, Bernstein claims he pretended to be asleep at the barracks after he was arrested, and overhead troopers discussing the field test. One trooper said the package tested negative for cocaine, the suit states.

"Well … make it positive," another trooper replied, according to the suit.



​I don't often find myself siding with law enforcement. Especially law enforcement that conspires to put 26 year olds, that had a little pot in their bra and were driving merely 5 MPH over the speed limit, behind bars. With that said, I am standing up for the boys in blue on this one. Sure, it's fucked up to fake a false positive on a narcotics field test. However, it's nowhere near as fucked up as a person that is driving through rural Pennsylvania with a bunch of homemade soap that's cut and packaged EXACTLY like cocaine in their car. That person deserves to go to prison whether they were possessing illegal drugs or not. As a matter of fact, they should go grab the sister too for using soap that someone made for her. People with the time and patience to make soap aren't to be trusted and neither are the people that willingly test out their product. They all belong in prison.

Even if they didn't do anything that was worthy of hard time, if given enough freedom they inevitably will. I can't think of too many things that I would want to do less than go about manufacturing my own grooming products. I'm pretty sure that's the last legal step before you are out killing animals (or people) with your bare hands. Give a man a bar of soap and he'll clean himself for a month. Teach him how to make soap and he'll be bored enough to do a bunch of psychedelics and go on a murder spree in an hour. I know cops are getting a bad rap these days, but their job is already hard enough without having to distinguish cocaine from soap wearing a cocaine costume. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck then the people who are looking out for the safety of the public shouldn't have to take time out of their day to give a duck test.