glasscastle posted this entry on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 9:33 am.
Posted in the category Serious News
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One Response to “Drug Hair Test Biased Against Afro-Am Cops”
If they are doing dope they shouldn’t be cops, I noticed none of them suggested taking a lie detector test to prove their innocence. The issue is not who is easier to catch doing it, its a matter of they should be doing it in the first place.
![](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/static/dowbrigade/<br />
affro.jpg” width=”150″ height=”157″ align=”left”>Seven former Boston police officers, all African-Americans<br />
who were fired after testing positive for cocaine in drug tests using<br />
samples of their hair, sued the police department yesterday, alleging<br />
the screening technique is biased against African-Americans.</p>
<p> Rheba Rutkowski, an attorney at Bingham McCutchen who represents the former<br />
officers, said scientific literature indicates that the texture of African-American<br />
hair as well as the hair products they use could skew the results of a<br />
hair test. She also said hair tests are easier to pass if an employee has<br />
light hair, and that stray molecules can bind to African-American hair,<br />
altering the results.</p>
<p> ”African-American hair is different from white hair because, among other<br />
things, it is coarser and thicker," Rutkowski said. ”In fact, those<br />
properties make it far more likely to yield a false positive on a hair<br />
test than white hair."</p>
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August 25th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
If they are doing dope they shouldn’t be cops, I noticed none of them suggested taking a lie detector test to prove their innocence. The issue is not who is easier to catch doing it, its a matter of they should be doing it in the first place.