Tracy Gittens
New York, NY — Tracy Gittens, an NYPD sergeant, is facing dismissal from duty as she recently tested positive for marijuana. However, she claims that the hair sample that was tested was not her original hair but from her hair weave instead.
“I was shocked. I do not do drugs,” Gittens claims as she testified at her department trial in the police headquarters. “When they told me I tested positive I immediately volunteered to take another test. It was impossible for the test to be positive.”
Upon knowing the results of the January 2017 random drug test, she voluntarily did a urine test and a blood test immediately, and another hair test the day after. She said the results of all those tests were negative for marijuana.
“The (initial) test had to be wrong because I do not do drugs,” she emphasized.
Gittens, 43 years old, claims that the NYPD officer who took samples accidentally snipped a part of her human hair weave that she wears as a ponytail. On the other hand, the nurse who took the sample for her second test got it from the top of her head, not the nape of her neck as what the officer did.
“I didn’t have my hairpiece on then,” she said regarding the second test. “It was) all natural.”
Gittens, who formerly served as a personal security detail to Mayor de Blasio, was suspended for 30 days due to the positive results. She is now facing dismissal.
Moreover, a DNA evidence eventually proved that the first sample she claims is not hers is actually a genetic match to her or a close relative.
“Unless a maternal relative somehow came in and switched out the samples with her own hair, there is no way this hair could be anyone’s but Sgt. Gittens,'” Department Advocate Office attorney Jeanie Moran said.