Flyers didn’t contain fentanyl

Papers placed on officers’ cars test negative for opioid

Sheriff’s deputies will evaluate whether they are using the most reliable drugtesting kits after laboratory results negated initial findings that flyers placed on officers’ vehicles could be laced with fentanyl, a spokesman confirmed.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez’s office on Friday announced the results of the laboratory tests, just days after a sergeant touched a flyer on her windshield and was subsequently hospitalized with fentany llike symptoms. Initial field tests determined that another flyer placed on a sheriff’s office vehicle contained the sometimes-deadly opioid.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences tested 13 flyers — all promoting the same organization as the flyer found on the sergeant’s car — as well as clothing items and blood and urine samples from the sergeant. Those tests came back negative.

Spokesman Jason Spencer said the sheriff’s office will begin looking into the testing kits, although he said officials don’t intend to swap

them out just yet.

“We just want to make sure we do the research and understand what’s out there,” Spencer said. “We’re going to explore and make sure we’re using the best possible.”

The scare highlights just the latest problem with the drug field tests in Harris County. The Houston Chronicle reported in July 2016 that 298 people had been convicted of drug possession, even though complete lab tests later found no controlled substances in the samples tested at the scene.

All 298 people pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanors before the field samples had been tested in the county’s forensic laboratory. Many of those people pleaded guilty based on the initial testing kits that indicated the substance recovered at the scene was positive for drugs. Those test kits cannot be used in trial as evidence under Texas law.

Possible change

Looking into the reliability of the sheriff’s office’s testing kits doesn’t necessarily mean they will be changed out, especially if the office is already using the best ones available, Spencer said.

A sergeant started feeling ill after removing a flyer from her windshield on Tuesday.

Around 15 to 20 flyers, promoting an organization called Targeted Justice, were found on cars near a Harris County Sheriff’s Office building on Lockwood in the Second Ward, authorities previously said. After the field test came back with a positive result for fentanyl, the sheriff’s office sent the remaining flyers to the county’s lab.

“One sergeant who touched a flyer is receiving medical treatment,” the sheriff’s office said Tuesday on Twitter. “Call authorities if you see these flyers and DO NOT TOUCH.”

The sergeant went to the hospital and was released later that day. It is unknown what caused the sergeant’s symptoms, but the county lab results came back negative. The sheriff’s office will notify other law enforcement agencies of the Forensic Institute’s findings, the spokesman said.

Mind-control group?

Targeted Justice, which purports to be an advocacy group for people who feel they are being mindcontrolled or harassed by a range of government entities, took to Twitter on Wednesday to deny handing out flyers and being involved with the incident.

“Our board, executive team, and members are victims of a staggering range of human rights violations, and as such, we do not endorse any activity that would endanger or harm another human,” a statement on the group’s website reads. “In fact, we stand staunchly against cruelty, violence and injustice wherever it comes from, even and especially from a perversion of authority.”

Stephen Tucker Paulsen contributed to this report.