The "those aren't my pants" excuse has been getting drug suspects nowhere for thirty years.
Reagan Cox of Palm Bay, Florida decided this weekend to take that excuse somewhere entirely new.
When Brevard County deputies moved her hand at the jail, what dropped to the floor made that excuse look modest.
Brevard County's Body Scanner Does Not Bluff
Cox, 30, picked up her first charge Saturday morning during a routine traffic stop – resisting an officer without violence.
Deputies transported her to the Brevard County Jail for processing.
That's when the scanner started talking.
The booking equipment flagged an abnormality in what the Brevard County Sheriff's Office diplomatically called Cox's "lower region" – or, in their words, her "jail purse area if you will."
Corrections deputies escorted Cox to a private changing room for a more thorough look.
Cox pressed her hand against her body the moment deputies turned to look.
Deputies moved it.
https://twitter.com/AmericanCrime01/status/2072126050625028100?s=20
A plastic baggie dropped to the floor.
Inside: approximately 3.8 grams of cocaine.
Cox insisted she had no idea whose cocaine it was – someone must have put it there during an "intimate encounter."
The Sheriff's Office posted to Facebook: "You really just can't make this stuff up … butt you sure can try as this one puts the ole … 'those are not my pants' excuse to shame!!"
Sheriff Wayne Ivey added his own line: "Folks, if not realizing that someone left cocaine in your 'Jail Purse' is not a good enough reminder to not do drugs, then I don't know what is!!"
A Defense for the Ages – and a Felony to Go With It
Cox walked out of Brevard County Jail the same day she walked in.
She left with a brand-new felony charge attached.
Introducing a controlled substance into a detention facility carries up to five years in Florida state prison.
The original resisting charge is still on the books.
Cox arrived facing one charge.
She left facing two.
That's what happens when the body scanner wins and the excuse loses.
The intimate-encounter defense is genuinely creative – it requires a jury to believe that a romantic partner secretly placed a cocaine-filled baggie inside Cox's body without her knowledge, presumably as some kind of surprise.
Florida courts have processed extraordinary claims over the years.
They have not processed that one.
Body scanners like the one at Brevard County Jail have quietly changed the game for corrections officers across America.
Facilities that invest in them routinely catch contraband that traditional strip searches and metal detector wands miss entirely – drugs, cell phones, weapons, all of it.
Some jails that have deployed them report eliminating contraband incidents almost entirely.
Cox walked into a facility with better detection technology than she had a plan.
While blue-city prosecutors were busy decriminalizing drug possession and releasing offenders before the ink dried on the paperwork, Florida's sheriffs were investing in equipment that actually catches criminals.
That's the difference between jurisdictions that take law enforcement seriously and ones that don't.
Brevard County takes it seriously.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey runs the kind of department where criminals walk in thinking they're clever and walk out facing felonies.
That's not an accident.
That's what law enforcement looks like when the local government actually supports it – when sheriffs are backed instead of blamed, when deputies are trusted instead of investigated, and when the system is built to catch criminals rather than protect them from consequences.
Reagan Cox walked into Brevard County Jail with 3.8 grams of cocaine and an excuse about romantic encounters.
She walked out with a felony.
In Florida, that's still how it ends.
Sources:
- Brevard County Sheriff's Office, Facebook Statement, June 2026.
- Daniel Cody, "Florida woman claims cocaine found in her butt after arrest must've been from 'intimate encounter,'" New York Post, June 30, 2026.
- "'Can't make this stuff up:' Florida woman caught with cocaine in her 'lower region,' sheriff says," ClickOrlando/WKMG News 6, June 29, 2026.
