NYPD officer blames her hair weave for failed drug test
NYPD Sgt. Tracy Gittens was stunned when she found out that she failed a random drug test and tested positive for marijuana.
“I was shocked. I do not do drugs,” said Gittens, who claims she was the victim of a false positive from her tainted hair weave, as she testified at her department trial at police headquarters Friday. “When they told me I tested positive I immediately volunteered to take another test. It was impossible for the test to be positive.”
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After she got the results of the initial test in January 2017 she got a urine and blood test at the doctor’s office. One day later she got a hair test done. Each and every test came back negative for drugs.
“The (initial) test had to be wrong because I do not do drugs,” she said.
Tracy Gittens who had at one time been assigned to Mayor de Blasio’s security detail was suspended for 30 days after her positive test results. She thinks that the NYPD officer who took her hair sample for testing accidentally took a sample of her human hair weave instead of her natural hair.
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During her testimony, she stated that when she paid out of pocket to be independently retested, the nurse taking the sample took it from the top of her head, not the nape of her neck as the NYPD officer had done.
“I didn’t have my hairpiece on then,” she said about the second test. “(It was) all natural.”
Gittens is now facing dismissal. She paid for a DNA test to be done in order to prove the first sample wasn’t her hair but according to department prosecutors, the results showed that it was a genetic match to either her or a close relative.
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“Unless a maternal relative somehow came in and switched out the samples with her own hair, there is no way this hair could be anyone’s but Sgt. Gittens,’” Department Advocate Office attorney Jeanie Moran stated.
According to Moran, Gittens insisted another portion of the sample be tested at a different lab, but that sample was also found to be positive for marijuana.
Since the latest testing came back, Gittens lawyer, Michael Giordano, has taken a different tact. He now argues that “they haven’t offered any evidence, whatsoever” that Sgt. Tracy Gittens intentionally consumed marijuana, implying that she may have gotten the drugs into her system by accident.
An NYPD Department Trial Commissioner will be the one to determine Gittens’ guilt or innocence and then make a recommendation to Police Commissioner James O’Neill who will then decide whether to terminate Gittens’ employment or not.
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