Georgia Southern QB, who's preparing to play LSU, declined to comment on potential civil action.

SLED doesn't recommend the use of drug field tests, but local agencies use them anyway.

Saluda County Sheriff's Office is reevaluating its use of field tests after the case.

Shai Werts is still frustrated about what happened to him on a two-lane country highway on the night of July 31, when officers arrested him because bird droppings on the hood of his car appeared to test positive as cocaine.

His mom relives that night over and over. Shock. Outrage. Hurt. It simmers through her mind each day until it boils over and she's compelled to watch the police video again and again of the hardest night of her son's life.

There's pride, too, in how he carried himself. How he precisely followed her instructions for how to safely pull over for a traffic stop so, as a young black man in a nation charged by viral videos of police brutality, he could try his best to protect his life.

She can't say precisely why she keeps watching, grasping for new insight into a traffic stop that still makes no sense to her. Because in her view, he did everything right.

The false positive from a $2 field test kit that the state's top law agency won't use was one part of a traffic stop that ended with Werts in jail and briefly suspended from the Georgia Southern football team where he's the star quarterback. The incident has raised scrutiny over how young black males should approach traffic stops. The stop also prompted a look into the professionalism of Saluda County deputies, and has led to an investigation of Charles Browder III, the deputy who made the initial stop. Before coming to Saluda County, Browder, who remains on duty, had already resigned from one state law enforcement agency when facing the possibility of being fired, according to records obtained by The Greenville News.

There’s also the question about the drug tests themselves that don't stand up in court and frequently return false positives, according to some experts.

At least eight Upstate law enforcement agencies use them, despite mounting evidence nationwide of the tests' inaccuracies that can land a person behind bars for possessing perfectly legal substances, an investigation by The Greenville News has found.

Among the substances that will provide a falsely positive chemical reaction, according to a leading expert on drug field tests? The very air we breathe.

Did Werts follow the law when he told dispatch he didn't want to pull over until he was in a well-lit place?

Werts was pulled over by Browder while he was on his way from Clinton, South Carolina, back to Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia. The drive took him through rural Saluda County.

Browder wrote in his incident report that he passed Werts going the opposite direction on Chappells Highway and clocked him driving 80 mph. Browder’s report said by the time he turned his vehicle around, he’d lost Werts and eventually turned around to go back where he started.

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

That’s when he saw Werts pass him again.

Browder told Werts during the traffic stop that the QB “dipped off” the highway to avoid getting pulled over, according to body camera footage. Werts said he made a wrong turn.

Regardless of the reason, when Werts saw the blue lights, he said he did just what his mother had taught him. He put on his hazard lights, called the dispatch center and said he was going to pull over when he found a well-lit place to stop.

Werts said in an exclusive interview with The Greenville News that, as a young, black man alone on a deserted road he was not comfortable stopping his car.

While handcuffed in the back of Browder’s SUV that night, Werts said to the deputy, "I’m not going to pull over in the dark where nobody around can see. You know what’s been going on in the world. No offense to you, but I just didn’t feel comfortable, officer. I wasn’t running."

Such an approach is not uncommon. Law enforcement agencies have even been known to tell people to do just that. And mothers of young black men frequently give similar advice to their sons.

Werts talked with his mom, Shona Rice, many times about that exact situation should it occur. He did everything she’d told him to do.

Browder wasn’t interested. “You are going to jail for speeding. And for failure to stop for blue lights, at this point,” he told Werts, according to the video. (In the end, Werts was not charged for the blue light violation).

Then, to another deputy, Browder said: “He thinks it matters if he calls (dispatch). It doesn’t matter.”

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who now is an associate professor in the school of law at the University of South Carolina, said officers need to acknowledge young, black males may be scared when they interact with police.

“Sometimes the mentality in policing, the demand for compliance, gets in the way of cooperative relationships between officers and community members,” said Stoughton, who researches policing.

Adding to the confusion, there's often mixed messaging from law enforcement, he said. On one hand, police tell the public to stop promptly and comply quickly with officers' commands. On the other hand, police often warn the public to call dispatch to confirm a stop, put on flashers, slow down and drive to a well-lit place if they don't feel safe.

For example, in late July the Greenville County Sheriff's Office had received reports of a vehicle impersonating deputies and trying to make traffic stops. The Sheriff's Office spokesman warned the public to pull over in a well-lit public place and call dispatch to confirm the traffic stop.

Lt. Ryan Flood, GCSO spokesman, said deputies prefer drivers stop promptly but, if for safety concerns someone doesn't feel like they should stop right away, they should put on their flashers and call dispatch.

At its core, how a traffic stop turns out for a driver depends on the attitude of the officer, Stoughton said.

“In this case, (Werts’) concern was ‘This is a cop and I don’t want this situation to go bad,’" Stoughton said. "I don’t know what else he could have done in that situation other than stopping promptly that would have allowed him to allay that concern.”

The Saluda County Sheriff's Office declined to speak about the traffic stop itself citing the speeding case against Werts is still pending as its reason. An internal investigation over the stop is expected to last up to 45 days, Saluda County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy Toby Horne said.

Traffic stop turned into argument over bird doo-doo

After Werts was handcuffed and placed in the patrol vehicle, deputies searched his car. They found nothing and began to theorize that Werts must have disposed of evidence.

They found his Georgia Southern identification card, athletic gear and information about a scholarship and guessed he must be an athlete.

"He's about to be (expletive) out of luck," a deputy says on the video.

As they searched the car, the deputies suggested that Werts was hiding something.

“He threw something out somewhere,” one deputy said.

“He threw something out. He had to have,” the deputy said again a few minutes later.

There is no evidence Werts threw anything from the car and the incident report doesn't mention it. Investigators returned days later to search side roads for anything that may have been tossed from his car, and didn't find anything, Horne said.

That night, Browder shined his flashlight on the hood, revealing streaks of white residue that ran down on the driver’s side.

Then, on a hunch, Browder said, he grabbed a drug field test and scraped some of the residue into the small plastic bag, the video shows. He broke the vials inside the bag and shook it, mixing the chemicals with the substance. It appeared to turn pink, a positive reaction to seemingly indicate the presence of cocaine.

“It turned pink, man,” Browder said. “That’s cocaine, ain’t it?” he said, shining his flashlight on the bag.

Another deputy laughs incredulously.

They theorized again, this time that Werts tried to throw a cocaine mixture from his car. Browder then walked back towards Werts and asked him what the white stuff was on the hood of his car.

"I swear to God that’s bird doo-doo," Werts said.

"Well, I swear to God it’s not because I just tested it and that turned pink," Browder said.

Browder then called a supervisor.

“He’s saying it’s bird poop, but I don't believe anything he’s telling me,” Browder said.

Werts tried to explain again that it was bird droppings. He said he tried to wash it off the night before using a gas station squeegee, but it just spread it around.

Later, Werts told The News he had parked under a tree at his grandmother’s home at Clinton Green Apartments and found the droppings the next day. He said he’d gone to a Love’s gas station on State 219 in Newberry to try to wash it off, but it just spread.

Werts said he knew he was headed to jail when Browder read him his Miranda rights.

“My heart was beating fast, and I was just thinking of how I was going to explain this to my parents and my coaches and how this is going to look to the public,” he said.

Werts declined to comment on potential civil action, but he said he’d like to know the motive of the deputy who searched his car for drugs, didn’t find any and then decided to use a field test on white bird poop on his car hood.

“I hope in the future those kinds of situations would be handled different, but as far as my situation, it wasn’t,” Werts said.

Rice, Werts mom, still can't believe how the traffic stop escalated so quickly. Every time she watches the video, it raises more questions.

"He's a young black male and they automatically just assumed that that white stuff was cocaine," she said. "You could hear him saying, 'oh, he's a drug dealer. Oh yeah, he's got a Yeti cooler. Oh yeah, he's dealing dope.' Like why? why? why?"

Samples of the substance analyzed by the SLED drug lab found no illegal drugs, contrary to indications from two field tests the deputy who arrested him that night used to help justify an arrest. Charges against Werts have since been dropped, and his record will be expunged.

Deputy resigned for 'conduct unbecoming an officer' at previous job

Browder, the deputy who made the traffic stop, is now under internal investigation after dashcam and bodycam video became public. The deputies should've been more professional in their handling of the incident and treatment of Werts, Horne said.

“We have noticed several things in the video that we want to take corrective actions on,” he said.

Among those, Horne said, was how the deputies spoke to Werts and interrupted Werts while he was talking.

A check of state Criminal Justice Academy records shows Browder resigned from his last job in law enforcement at the Lexington County Sheriff's Office in December 2017 to avoid being fired. He would have been fired for a violation of agency policy and an internal investigation was conducted into "conduct unbecoming an officer," the report said.

The Greenville News has filed requests under the state's Freedom of Information Act for Browder's personnel files at Lexington County, Saluda County and the Columbia Police Department, where he worked from 2015-2017.

No drugs found as lab tests prioritized. Now Werts wants public to know about field tests

Werts was booked into the Saluda County Detention Center and told he could make one phone call. He tried his mom six times before realizing her phone wouldn’t accept collect calls. Then he called his dad.

“While I was in there I was thinking about everything,” he said. “Man, you think about everything when you’re locked behind those walls.”

He was released on bond the next day. He got his car back and took it to his lawyer's office to collect samples from the hood. Then he took it to a car wash.

He was suspended from the Georgia Southern football team. News reports aired about his arrest, and the story had gone national before he could get results back from a voluntary drug test on Aug. 2.

He was clean. Two days later, he returned to practice. Now, he’s getting ready for his team’s opening game on Saturday, Aug. 31 against nationally ranked Louisiana State University.

His lawyer, Townes Jones IV, the Sheriff’s Office and the 11th Circuit Solicitor’s Office pushed for SLED to expedite a lab test on the samples taken from his car.

The lab results can take up to six months, said SLED lab director Todd Hughey, who oversees forensics operations for the state lab.

Werts’ results took eight days.

Thankful to be cleared quickly, Werts said he recognized it's because he had the resources to hire an attorney, his position as an athlete and public pressure surrounding the case. Horne, at the Saluda County Sheriff’s Office, said the national attention expedited the test.

Werts recognizes others don’t enjoy the advantages he had after the arrest. They may sit in jail for weeks or months before a false field test is cleared by lab results.

That is why he’s still talking about the case now, he said.

Drug field tests could jail innocent people, experts say, but police still widely use them

The lab that ultimately cleared Werts does not process the $2 field tests officers used when making arrests. Instead, it tests the rest of the evidence submitted by law enforcement, and certified drug analysts use $100,000-plus machines to determine the type and weight of drug, Hughey said — or in some cases whether a drug is found at all.

Hughey said he doesn’t recommend law enforcement agencies use drug field tests for two reasons: the tests are notoriously inaccurate and officers are not trained to safely handle drugs, and the recent rise in fentanyl and carfentanil, make using field tests dangerous.

The tests can ruin lives because they can react to common legal substances such as chocolate, Tylenol, herbs or just about any kind of plant material, said Omar Bagasra, a biology professor at Claflin University who researches drug field tests and directs the university's forensic lab, which conducts lab drug evidence tests for the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety. Those false positives can lead to bad arrests, he said.

Field tests don't distinguish between a drug and other legal substances that may be mixed into a drug, such as baking soda or sugar mixed with cocaine, he said. In a lab, chemists run controls to separate the substances.

A marijuana field test, for instance, doesn't react to the presence of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, said Bagasra. Instead, it reacts to plant material, meaning it'll test positive for herbs, hemp or grass.

The tests are "voodoo medicine," Bagasra said, and he can't believe officers in technology-savvy America still use them.

The problem could be easily remedied, he said. There are a number of handheld gas chromatograph devices on the market that provide accurate results, he said. They're similar to the instruments used in drug labs, but are portable and their quality has improved in recent years, he said.

Greenville Police use a handheld device equipped with Raman spectroscopy, which can quickly and safely test for over 450 substances, including narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens and analgesics without relying on user interpretation, said Donnie Porter, GPD spokesman.

Greenville officers also are equipped with field test kits, which they may use when they've established reasonable suspicion, Porter said.

Sirchie, the dominant company that sells the tests marketed exclusively to law enforcement agencies, notes on its website that results should only be considered presumptive and that the tests are known to react to legal substances. A phone call to request comment from Sirchie on Wednesday was not immediately returned.

Police officers in many cases have no idea the field tests they use aren't accurate, Stoughton said. He knows because for five years as a cop, he used them.

Police gravitate toward the tests because of their simplicity, he said.

In most cases, police could make a probable cause case for a drug crime based on the totality of circumstances, a technique that many agencies use. A suspect may be carrying a small plastic bag of white powder tucked in his waistband, a common hiding place for cocaine, and officers would be able to build a case based on training and expertise, he said.

Instead of also using the unreliable test kits, Stoughton said agencies should rely on their training and expertise and create policies to wait for drug lab results before filing charges. Solicitors could decline to accept a plea deal until drug lab analysis is returned for cases where the field test is the main evidence, he said.

In the Upstate the field test kits are used by:

Sheriff's offices in Anderson, Greenville and Spartanburg counties

Police in Fountain Inn, Greenville, Greer, Mauldin and Simpsonville. Travelers Rest did not respond.

Several agencies said their officers don't rely only on the test kits but on a complete set of circumstances that point to a crime. If unsure, officers can wait for lab results before filing charges, police officials said.

In South Carolina, results from field tests don’t meet standards for evidence in court. Before a trial, agencies must receive confirmation of drug type and weight from a drug lab, Hughey said.

Saluda County is reevaluating its use of the field tests that returned a false positive on the bird poop on Werts' car, Horne said. According to Horne, part of that evaluation is providing training for its officers from the company that supplies the test kits.

Narcotics officers with SLED don't use field drug tests, said Kathryn Richardson, SLED spokeswoman. SLED's drug lab also doesn't track how many positive field tests used by agencies that its lab finds are actually false positives.

Next: Werts name restored and the road ahead

The short-term damage to Werts' reputation and the way he felt disrespected by officers during the traffic stop have proved difficult to move past, he said.

“It’s been really hard,” Werts said. “You want to be a household name for making plays on the field and doing the right things. Although I didn’t do anything wrong, I became a household name for all the wrong reasons.”

Werts said he wants to raise awareness that officers shouldn't rely on field tests to make drug charges.

“ When you think of people who don’t, people who aren’t a Division I quarterback and they aren’t able to have the kind of resources that I have, they probably would still be sitting in jail, and that sucks,” Werts said.

Contact investigative reporter Nathaniel Cary at ncary@greenvillenews.com or follow @nathanielcary on Twitter.