NEW YORK — The Bronx DA’s office has dropped the charges against a Queens public defender arrested on Rikers Island for possession of alleged drug-soaked papers after lab tests showed there were no narcotics on the documents, the Daily News has learned.

Prosecutors said Wednesday they are declining to prosecute Bernardo Caceres, 30, a lawyer with Queens Defenders, who was very publicly arrested June 13 at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center.

“I had no doubt the results were going to come back as they did,” Caceres told The News. “I am no ‘drug peddling attorney’ as I was described.”

According to their previous account, officials with the Correction Department and the Correction Officers Benevolent Association said a canine alerted about the papers in Caceres’ possession as he entered the jail with another lawyer to meet with a client, Luis DeJesus. A field test later indicated there was THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, on the papers.

The arrest was widely publicized by the union and confirmed by the department. “130 pages of THC-laced paper during scheduled attorney visit,” a COBA press release trumpeted. The union also put out a photo of Caceres in handcuffs — questionable since DOC policy bars photos in the jails, especially of people in custody.

COBA President Benny Boscio declared, “The fact that this attorney would brazenly attempt to smuggle in a large quantity of THC is further proof paper documents should be scanned.”

DOC spokeswoman Annais Morales said the agency “applaud[s] the members of our K9 Unit who were able to prevent this contraband from coming into the jails.”

But the facts turned against Boscio and DOC, as the subsequent lab tests proved there were no narcotics whatsoever on the papers, a law enforcement source said.

Caceres said his client DeJesus was in the middle of trial on robbery charges and he was at Rikers that day to prep him for his testimony.

The arrest led to the postponement of the trial and Caceres’ withdrawal from the case. It may be months before the trial can begin again. DeJesus also faced charges based on the faulty field test.

“I had been representing him for over two years, he’s been in Rikers for a year,” Caceres said. “We had picked a jury and he had a right to see his discovery. This really was an injustice for him.”

Caceres said the man who took the photo when he was in handcuffs that was distributed by the union taunted and berated him as he snapped the pics. He said the man was dressed in civilian clothes.

“Some person takes pictures of me and is high-fiving the [officers] as they come out,” he said. “I am asking for him not to take my photo. He’s berating me. He tells me I’m taking things as a joke. Then they put it on their social media. It was outrageous.”

The photo raises questions because in 2020, a jail staffer leaked a photo of fallen Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein at breakfast in a jail mess hall on Rikers Island. That sparked both an internal probe and a DOI investigation. DOC also has strict limits on media photos in the jails.

The probe focused on then-Commissioner Cynthia Brann’s inner circle. In the Caceres incident, a man in civilian clothes with proximity to uniformed operations in a secure area suggests someone with a high security clearance.

Caceres said he was held for roughly six hours before he was given a DAT, driven off of Rikers in a paddy wagon to his car and released about 8 p.m.

“They confiscated my phone and wouldn’t give me a phone to call anyone,” he said. “They returned my briefcase with my documents, but they took my phone. I still don’t have it back despite two trips to the 41st Precinct to get it back. They claim it wasn’t marked as my property.”

Meanwhile, Caceres’ lawyer Earl Ward said the incident once again exposed DOC’s use of flawed field tests.

“DOC’s conduct here was egregious. Their tests are flawed, and they know it. Yet they continue to use these tests to arrest innocent people like Mr. Caceres. They tarnished this young lawyer’s reputation, and he intends to fight back,” Ward said.

The Caceres case isn’t the only time DOC has been left red-faced over its narcotics field tests.

After correction officials used pictures of supposedly drug-soaked books and even a child’s letter in a 2022 City Council hearing to highlight smuggling, a Department of Investigation report last November found lab tests proved those items were in fact negative for all illegal drugs.

The DOI report also concluded DOC’s field tests for fentanyl were wrong 85% of the time. But, the report found, DOC “rarely” double-checked the field test results by sending them to labs, a step even recommended by the field test makers.

DOI even warned DOC exactly not to do as they did in the Caceres case seven months later. “DOC should not make arrests of any person, staff, visitors, or PICs on the basis of field tests in the absence of other evidence corroborating the presence of narcotics,” the report said.

And in 2022 and again in 2023, state inspectors general found that state prison officials had improperly charged hundreds of inmates based on false positives.

The case could also be a setback for DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie’s campaign for broader power to search detainee mail for contraband. The Board of Correction recently refused to allow searches of mail outside the presence of detainees.

Now that Caceres has been cleared, the Williamsburg, Brooklyn native and graduate of Bard College and Cardozo Law School said he is mulling legal action over the arrest.

“My family had to see my name be put through the mud,” Caceres said. “They [DOC] should know those tests come back with a false positive at an alarmingly high rate. I feel bad for my client more than I do for me.”

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