The South Carolina deputy was convinced the bird poop found on the hood of the car he had pulled over was cocaine, refusing to believe it could be anything else.
But the dashcam video from the Saluda County sheriff’s patrol car shows the deputies were looking for any excuse to incarcerate Georgia Southern University quarterback Shai Werts after pulling him over for speeding on July 31, placing him in handcuffs and ordering him into the back of their patrol car to allow them to search his car.
Deputies said they did that because Werts did not pull over immediately after they had flashed their lights but Werts had dialed 911 and told dispatchers he did not feel safe pulling over on the side of the darkened highway. He told the dispatcher he would pull over as soon as he pulled into the nearest town.
The message was relayed to deputies who nevertheless began to prove just why the 21-year-old black man was afraid of them.
The video shows the deputies were doing a deep search of his car, placing his personal items on the trunk of his car but still not finding anything illegal when one of them spotted the bird crap on the hood of the car.
“What’s the white stuff on the front of your hood, man?” the deputy can be heard asking Werts who is sitting in the back of the car.
“Bird shit,” Werts reponds.
“Bird shit? That ain’t bird shit,” the deputy responds.
“I promise you that’s bird doo doo,” Werts responds.
“I promise you that’s not,” the cop responds, informing him that field tests they conducted proved it was cocaine.
The cop turned out to be wrong after the bird crap was analyzed in a lab and was determined not to be cocaine.
Today, prosecutors released a statement saying they will remove the charge of cocaine possession from the quarterback’s record.
But the damage has been done considering Georgia Southern University wasted no time in suspending him from the team. The school has since reinstated his status.
Watch the shortened video above and the full video below where the conversation about the white stuff on the hood begins at 15:15.
