Sergeant 'weaves' tale over pot test
Blames hair extension for ‘false’ positive
An NYPD sergeant who once worked in First Lady Chirlane McCray’s personal security detail has coiffed up quite an excuse after testing positive for marijuana — she’s claiming the department mistakenly tested a strand from her human-hair weave.
The hair-brained claim is the latest bid by Sgt. Tracy Gittens to keep her job after a random drug test came up positive for pot and she was pulled from overseeing security at Gracie Mansion, sources tell The Post.
The 13-year NYPD veteran, who has been on paid desk duty in Queens since this winter and is awaiting a departmental trial, says that when she was tested, technicians unknowingly collected strands of human hair from her weave.
She claims that they snipped from the back of her head, where she couldn’t see, and that had they tested her actual hair, it would have been clean of drugs, according to sources.
“She doesn’t smoke marijuana, and she’s unaware how it may have gotten into her system,” one police source told The Post. “That’s why she’s thinking it may have been the weave.” Other colleagues say the story is
tuft to believe.
“Oh, stop. It doesn’t even pass the laugh test,” one police source scoffed. “That’s one of the lamest excuses I’ve ever heard. What people will do to save their jobs is pathetic.”
Another cop said the sergeant should have said she was wearing a weave at the test site if she was concerned.
“She should have said upfront that is not my real hair so they could take the hair from somewhere else,” the cop said. “I’ve heard every excuse, but those tests are 100 percent accurate and I tend not to believe her story.”
Gittens did not respond to requests for an interview. Her law- yer, John D’Alessandro, also declined to comment.
She’s not the first cop to attempt a crazy-sounding dodge after testing positive for pot.
In 2006, an anti-terror detective, Anthony Chiofalo, claimed his wife had laced his meatballs with marijuana without telling him in hopes that a positive drug test would force him into retirement.
The “spacey meatball” defense failed. Chiofalo was fired. Two years later, he lost a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit that claimed the firing was “arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and unconstitutional.”