Cedar Rapids police say they made a drug arrest Thursday by essentially following the evidence down the road. An officer on routine patrol spotted a speeding black S-U-V in a residential area.
Cedar Rapids Police Sergeant Cristy Hamblin says when the officer tried to stop the vehicle, the driver wouldn’t pull over. “It was soon discovered by the officer why he didn’t want to stop,” she says. “The driver rolled down his window and began dumping something that was white powder out of a baggy that he was holding,” Hamblin says. “Turns out, after testing it, that it was meth.”
In what may have been an attempt to get rid of some of the evidence, police say the driver also swallowed the drug. “So we ended up taking Michael Brecht up to the hospital and sat with him at the hospital for about six or seven hours to make sure that he was safe to be taken to jail,” Hamblin says.
Brecht has been charged with possession of both meth and pot and drug paraphernalia. He also faces a variety of traffic charges, like speeding, failure to obey a traffic control device and failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. He also had no insurance on the Chevy Tahoe he was driving.
Sergeant Hamblin says officers were able to recover some of the white powder — the meth — from the side of the road where Brecht had dumped it. “And then they also found the baggy,” Hamblin says.
The police department’s news release announcing Brecht’s arrest was headlined: “We Take Littering Seriously in Cedar Rapids”.