I'm not one to trust police, however I recognize that police work is stressful and scary at times so it is more plausible to me that police are having panic attacks, maybe a form of mass hysteria about fentanyl rather than tons of them lying about it. I do not disagree that police have a serious honesty and accountability problem though so i'm sure there have been cases where it was lying about the fentanyl.

All those issues you mention may be driving the lying, and as you mention there's an accountability problem. More transparency would help.

Yeah, the cycle goes:

  1. be overly vigilant to a real or percieved threat for an extended period of time

  2. "threat-finding" starts leaking into regular life

  3. freak out about a normal situation falsely identified as a threat

The 3rd step resolves the whole thing, and is actually good (if nobody gets hurt!). That's a chance to take a breather and shine some light on the situation, or start the whole thing over again.