Cross-contamination at Rhode Island drug lab calls 52 cocaine cases into question

AA scientist and 52 other cases involving cocaine were subject to intense scrutiny after an accidental cross-contamination. Officials from Rhode Island said that the scientist did not correctly identify a substance during a blind test.

According to Rhode Island Department of Health it performed a routine quality-assurance testing at its Forensic Drug Chemistry Lab. In order to verify that they are providing accurate results, scientists blindly tested different drug types in the quality assurance test. One scientist falsely claimed that there was cocaine in a case that the department had already identified as clean.

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The incident was only the result of one test. However, the department stated that all the cases of the employee were being investigated. 52 of the cases had enough cocaine to cause accidental cross-contamination.

“Although this issue arose during analysis of a quality assurance test case, not in relation to an actual criminal case, the [Health Department] is notifying the the Rhode Island General’s Office of this issue,” Glen Gallagher, State Health Lab Director, said this in a letter sent to the attorney general’s Narcotics and Violent Crime Unit Friday.

Unnamed scientists have been expelled from testing cocaine cases, until they can be retrained. The employee is clean of any past mistakes.

Gallagher says that the scientist worked on around 1,313 cases of law enforcement between June 2021 to November 2022. However, health officials stated that 549 cases didn’t involve cocaine. The cross-contamination of the 436 other cases that involved large amounts of cocaine is unlikely because they were all high volume. A batch of 236 samples has been reviewed as they may have cross-contamination.

“If evidence on these cases remains and can be retrieved from law enforcement agencies for re-testing, re-testing will be done immediately,” Gallagher stated.

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Experts have not been able to determine the cause of the error, but they speculate that it could have been due to the sensitive equipment used or the fact that the drug can be transmitted through air.

A state’s attorney general spokeswoman said that while the department checked ongoing cocaine cases, no one is currently being held or incarcerated for only cocaine-related offenses. WPRI-12 also stated that the lab was expediting the retesting process in 52 cases.