A rookie cop is suing to be reinstated to the NYPD after he was fired in March for testing positive for cocaine. Alvaro Casado insists he's no coke fiend, he just made the mistake of drinking a cup of Mate de Coca tea the night before he was tested. The South American tea is made from coca leaves and has been known to show up on drug screenings; one study found an average of 4.14 mg of cocaine in a cup of Peruvian coca tea. (No caffeine, though!)
Casado claims his girlfriend's mother prepared the tea for him last October in order to help calm his nerves after a car accident. He's an airman in the Air National Guard, and the next day he tested positive for coke in a test administered by the Air Force. But the Air Force eventually bought his story about the tea, and officials concluded Casado "did not knowingly ingest an illegal substance." However, they forwarded the test results to the NYPD, which administered another test of his hair and urine samples in November 2009. He came up positive for coke again and was canned.
According to court papers obtained by the Daily News, "Neither (Casado) nor (girlfriend Noelle) Binasarie nor Sherman were aware of the fact that consuming Mate de Coca tea would cause (Casado) to test positive for cocaine, and were unaware of the tea's connection with cocaine at all." And the suit maintains that subsequent testing showed chemical levels that were too low to have been cocaine. Whatever the outcome, Casado has now joined our growing collection of bizarre cop drug test excuses, like the 22-year NYPD veteran who failed to convince judges that his girlfriend put marijuana in the meatballs, and the cop who insisted he tested positive for coke because he performed oral sex on his coke head girlfriend.
