SC deputy cleared of wrongdoing after thinking bird poop was cocaine on college QB's car

Nathaniel Cary | The Greenville News

A late-night traffic stop on a rural South Carolina highway sparked controversy when a Saluda County Sheriff's Office deputy used an unreliable field test to determine that a white substance on the hood of a car he pulled over was cocaine.

Turns out — just as Shai Werts, Georgia Southern University's starting quarterback, told the deputy repeatedly — the substance was bird poop.

Yet Deputy Charles Allen Browder III did nothing wrong according to an internal investigation conducted by the Saluda sheriff's office. Browder remains on active duty and faces no discipline for his actions on the side of the road three months ago, according to personnel records obtained by The Greenville News this month via the state's Freedom of Information Act.

After being charged with cocaine possession, spending a night in jail and briefly being suspended from his football team, Werts was cleared of the charges when official results from a State Law Enforcement Division drug lab found no evidence of cocaine.

In the wake of the incident that drew national attention, the Saluda sheriff's office has made a fundamental shift in how it uses the field tests. Deputies will no longer rely solely on drug field tests to determine whether a substance may be an illegal drug, said Saluda County Chief Deputy Toby Horne.

"Now we'll no longer make charges if it's an unknown substance," Horne said. "We'll wait for lab results to come back."

The sheriff's office has stopped short of getting rid of the tests altogether even as scientists and experts say the tests are wildly unreliable because they show positive results for many common legal products, an investigation by The News found in August.

The cocaine field test used in Werts' case will even react to the presence of air, according to Omar Bagasra, a biology professor at Claflin University who researches drug field tests and directs the university's forensic lab.

Body cam footage from Shai Werts traffic stop Full body cam footage shows the traffic stop of Georgia Southern quarterback Shai Werts.

Werts' police stop was captured by bodycam and dashcam footage from the scene.

He had initially been pulled over for a traffic stop when Browder placed him in handcuffs in his patrol vehicle and deputies searched Werts' car.

Browder decided to use a drug field test kit to test a white substance that covered part of the hood of Werts' car. He scrapped some of the white powdery substance into a plastic test-kit bag, crushed small vials of chemicals in the kit, and watched the substance turn pink, a potential sign of the presence of cocaine.

On scene, Werts repeatedly told the deputy it was bird poop that he had tried to wash off his windshield the day before at a gas station.

Though his drug charge was dropped, Werts received a speeding ticket and has requested a jury trial for the citation, according to court records.

The News contacted Werts through Georgia Southern's sports media relations and was directed to Werts' attorney, who didn't return requests for comment Friday and Monday.

The sheriff's office is using far fewer of the $2 side-of-the-road drug field tests since the Werts incident, Horne said.

Deputies have been instructed to rely on their training to determine whether a substance is likely drug-related rather than rely on the drug field tests, he said. If drug paraphernalia, packaging or the substance leads deputies to believe it's an illegal drug, they should use their expertise to decide whether to press charges at the scene, he said. For all other cases, deputies will collect the drug samples and wait for SLED's drug lab report before filing any charges, he said.

Greenville News investigation: Falsely charged for cocaine that was bird poop, college QB speaks as case handling is investigated

The sheriff's office had received complaints from the public about the handling of the incident and treatment of Werts during the traffic stop, Horne said. The sheriff's office opened an internal review of the traffic stop, which included a review of all available video footage, and determined Browder hadn't violated any policies, Horne said.

Browder had previously resigned rather than being fired from the Lexington County Sheriff's Office for conduct unbecoming an officer, according to records from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.

In a letter accompanying his application to the Saluda County Sheriff's Office, Browder wrote that he made "some mistakes that I fully regret and have learned from. I was terminated from Lexington County for these mistakes and took full responsibility for them and was left without a job."

He worked at a chicken farm before being hired at Saluda County in October 2018.

Browder has also received an oral warning for insubordination in March 2019 for not following his supervisor's instructions when Browder personally responded to a call for service from a friend's girlfriend rather than having the woman call dispatch as instructed.

Watch the video: A college quarterback and a mysterious substance: What the SC traffic stop footage shows