When the police arrest Henry and take him in, you see a detective going through his stuff and gets a little powder on his finger and tastes it and grins.
I'm told detectives don't actually do that. You don't want to taste an unknown substance like that, because it might be dangerous and you end up ingesting a little bit of it. It's one of those silly movie cliches that gets repeated over and over again.
Certainly they don’t do that anymore. But I could envision that being done, albeit probably technically out of protocol, in the 1980s.
shareYeah the police was on Hendry for years by now, he had a reputation of selling drugs. The cop that tasted knew it was 99% legit and not some poison shit from a random junkie they picked up from the street.
shareIf they knew what it was after watching Henry so closely, why the need to taste it then?
What they do is send it to a lab, and have it identified by someone trained, to confirm it.
Well they were working on his case for years and finally they got him. This gesture is more of a fuck you in the face your so screwed now rather than waiting for weeks to get the lab results.
shareBack in the day before Fentanyl they did this, before they had testing kits to determine if a white powder was Coke
shareI'm pretty sure they didn't. I've seen it debunked in several places. There are other things a powder could be besides fentanyl that might be harmful in small amounts, and like I already pointed out, tasting it would cause them to ingest it. If it is something illegal, they've just taken a small amount of an illegal drug.
It's not like identifying a drug by taste is something they are trained in, either. I don't know how they'd be able to tell drugs apart by taste without having that, unless they are going out and buying heroine, cocaine, etc and tasting it on their own.
i remember hearing about this test many years ago - probably around the time this film was out actually! - and possibly on a TV show so maybe it's inaccurate too.....
but they don't actually "taste" anything, as in they don't swallow or otherwise consume it. The put a small amount on their finger and rub it on their gums. If it causes a tingling sensation on their gums - while it doesn't mean it's definitely illegal drugs, it does mean it's something other than flour or sugar!
And, as other posters have said, doing this in front of Henry may have been a "we've got you" gesture.
As an aside, I love Ray Liotta's acting in this scene. Especially the bit when the cop interviewing him pats him and says "bye bye dickhead", you see him recoil like he wants to take a swing at him but knows that would only make things worse.
His reaction when they come in with Dina Meyer and all the incriminating evidence too is brilliant - all because she didn't want to break her nails or use the dishwasher!