'These Aren't My Pants,' Said the Chicago Police Recruit Arrested After Being Found With 8 Grams of Crack in His Pants

CWBChicago — A Chicago Police Department recruit was taken into custody after another recruit found bags of real crack cocaine in his pants pocket during a narcotics arrest training scenario, according to an internal report reviewed by CWBChicago.

Upon being confronted about the eight baggies of crack found in his cargo pants pocket, the 24-year-old allegedly replied, “These aren’t my pants.”

According to the report, around 10:30 a.m. Monday, a trainer gave the recruit a small baggie decorated with blue stars that contained simulated heroin for “scenario based training involving narcotics related offenses.”

Another recruit was instructed to perform a custodial search while the trainer observed and critiqued his performance, the report said.

While searching the subject’s cargo pants, the recruit conducting the search found a clear knotted baggie containing four small zip baggies decorated with green dollar signs, each containing suspected crack cocaine, according to the report.

Knowing that the phony drugs provided for training were in a blue-starred baggie, the trainer asked the trainee what the knotted baggie contained.

“That’s nothing, that’s just garbage,” the recruit allegedly replied.

Pressed for an answer, the recruit allegedly claimed, “These aren’t my pants. They belong to my brother, he’s the police.”

Just incredible stuff here. I haven't done any research in my life on what you need to do to prepare for the police academy, but I'm pretty sure I could have intuitively come up with "don't bring your own real drugs to drug search training day."

Can you imagine the horror of being handed a bag of fake drugs to put in your pocket knowing you're about to be searched and there are other real drugs on you, too? It seems like faking a bathroom emergency or a heart attack would have at least given you a 1 percent chance of making it out of there. Just do something other than letting it happen and trying out, "These aren't my pants."

Tough way to end up in the slammer, though. This poor guy thought he was going to be on the enforcement side of the law and instead he's one of the only people in Chicago that actually gets sent to jail. Brutal luck.

I hope this recruit's lawyer is able to find his real pants so they can put this whole misunderstanding to rest.