Cop Says He Failed Drug Test Because Wife Spiked Meatballs with Pot

A New York appeals court has decided to uphold the firing of a former NYPD detective after he blamed his failed drug test on spiked meatballs, according to the New York Daily News. Anthony Chiofalo, who has served 22 years with the department, tried to overturn his 2006 termination by Commissioner Raymond Kelly, but was unsuccessful when the court failed to accept his unusual defense.

According to Chiofalo, his 2006 drug test confirmed the presence of marijuana in his system because his wife Catherine had secretly slipped the drug into a plate of meatballs. The wife, who smokes medical marijuana for back pain, admitted to investigators that she laced her husband's meatballs with the hopes that he would be fired from his dangerous job.

The spiked meatball defense was rejected when a judge's panel decided that the high levels of marijuana measured in hair samples could not have come from accidental ingestion. "The Court of Appeals has held that the Commissioner was empowered to choose the method of drug testing, and that choice was not subject to collective bargaining," the judges wrote in their decision.

According to Chiofalo, the hair-sample test was not authorized by the NYPD's collective-bargaining agreement with his union.