Kodak Black now charged with possession of oxycodone, not cocaine; attorney argues he has a prescription

South Florida rapper Kodak Black was trying to hide oxycodone, not cocaine, prosecutors say, when he stuffed white powder in his mouth after police found him asleep at the wheel in Plantation last month.

A roadside drug test had originally come back positive for cocaine. But later lab testing revealed that the substance was oxycodone, prosecutors say.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office filed information Monday charging Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, with one count of possession of oxycodone and one count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, a month after the traffic stop that the rapper’s attorney says violated his constitutional rights.

His attorney, Bradford Cohen, is arguing that the rapper has a valid prescription for the drug. He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he plans to present evidence to that effect on Wednesday.

State Attorney’s Office spokesperson Paula McMahon told the Sun Sentinel that prosecutors spoke with one of the defense attorneys Tuesday morning and “will review any documentation the defense wants to send over.”

Black was originally arrested on charges of cocaine possession on Dec. 7 after a Plantation police officer found him asleep at the wheel, his Bentley SUV blocking the road, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The State Attorney’s Office never formally filed cocaine charges.

When the officer approached the car, he smelled “a strong odor of burnt cannabis” and alcohol, according to the affidavit. He spoke with Black, who had woken up, and then returned to his patrol car. When he and a backup officer returned to Black’s car, he noticed that Black’s mouth was full of white powder.

The powder field-tested positive for cocaine, according to the affidavit, and officers arrested Black. Searching him, they found a plastic baggie with a small amount of a white substance in Black’s left pocket. The powder from the ground and in the bag weighed 4.1 grams.

As officers placed Black in handcuffs, he uttered that it was “Percocet,” the officer wrote in the affidavit, a common term used for oxycodone.

In a post on Instagram Tuesday morning, Cohen accused the officer of lying and misrepresenting his observations.

“Unbelievable and it will not be tolerated,” Cohen wrote, describing it as an “abuse of power.”

In a motion to suppress, he argued that the officer should not have initiated the traffic stop because Black was not actually blocking traffic at the time or intending to block traffic.

The officer “was relying solely on speculation and the mere possibility of future traffic obstruction,” the motion states.

“I would get a copy of the police report and draw your own conclusions,” Detective Robert Rettig, a spokesperson for Plantation Police, said in response to Cohen’s accusations Tuesday.

The field test kits are “presumptive,” he said. They give officers probable cause to make an arrest, but are not definitive, which is why the substance is then sent to the Broward Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab for analysis and the State Attorney’s Office files charges based on the lab results.

It’s possible the substance was a mix or had traces of cocaine, Rettig said. Oxycodone usually comes in capsules or tablets.

But field test kits also have a history of producing false positives, often by picking up household chemicals. The kits are enough to send people to jail, sometimes even leading to guilty pleas during preliminary hearings if defendants agree to a plea deal.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said in September that it would no longer use its cocaine field test kits, supplied by the company Scott Co., after a detective found that common over-the-counter medications were resulting in false positives, according to First Coast News.

The test kit used in Black’s case was a NIK Public Safety Test Kit, according to the probable cause affidavit. The brand has also come under scrutiny in the past. A 2023 ProPublica investigation on drug test kits reported that executives at Safariland Group, the company which produces NIK kits, keeps a list of over 50 legal substances that give false positives.

In 2017, an Orlando man was sent to jail on drug charges because the glaze of his Krispy Kreme doughnut tested positive for meth on a NIK field test, NPR reported.

If prosecutors review the prescription and determine it’s valid, they may also still have to determine if the manner in which Black had it in his possession was legal.

The rapper has a history of legal troubles related to drug use. He was arrested on July 16, 2022, on charges of trafficking in oxycodone and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription.

He is required to take drug tests as part of his pre-trial release program, but has not shown up for drug tests multiple times, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which has issued two separate warrants for his arrest as a result, court records show.