Police arrested man at checkpoint and mistook his daughter’s ashes for drugs

The ash test result gave a false positive.

The actions of a group of police officers from the city of Springfield generated a scandal which is analyzed by the American justice: they arrested a man for speeding, arrested him for having found marijuana and searched his car They mistook the ashes of a 2-year-old girl for methamphetamine.

Dartavius ​​barnes He was handcuffed inside a patrol car when a police officer approached him to tell him that they had found a metal container in the center console of their vehicle who have tested positive for methamphetamine or ecstasy. Hearing the policeman’s version, the man looked at him confused. After a few minutes they showed him the urn they were talking about and he was horrified.

“No, no, no, brother, she’s my daughter. What are they doing, my brother? It’s my daughter!Barnes could be heard screaming in the soldiers’ body camera video filmed in April 2020.

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Barnes kept telling the officer that this container was not an illegal substance, but these were the remains of Ta’Naja Barnes. The baby died in 2019 when her negligent mother Twanka L. Davis and her partner left her to starve, hypothermia and dehydration. Both were sentenced to 20 years in prison.

After hearing the detainee’s desperate demand, the police began to debate what to do with the container. They looked at the dust and kept saying that the drug test had given a positive result. In reality, later, we found out that the test gave a false positive.

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Finally the police decided to release Barnes when her father arrived at the scene to confirm that the urn was the remains of his granddaughter. Dartavius ​​has been advised to appear in court for illegal possession of cannabis.

The decision to open the urn from his daughter’s ashes without her consent led Barnes to file a federal lawsuit in October against six Springfield Police Department officers and the city of Springfield. The court file considers that the sealed ballot box was opened illegally and that some of the ashes were spilled during drug tests.

The police department responded to the complaint and ruled that officers “are entitled to qualified immunity since their conduct was justified by an objectively reasonable belief that their actions were legal.” The City of Springfield has not commented on this. The trial is scheduled to take place in August 2022..