An elderly man in Orlando, Florida was arrested and locked up when a police officer mistook crumbs of doughnut glaze in his car for crystal meth, the Orlando Sentinel has reported.

Daniel Rushing, 64, was handcuffed, strip-searched and taken to the county jail after roadside drug tests of four tiny flakes on the floor of his car came up positive for crystal meth. 

The only problem was, the flakes were simply the remnants of Mr Rushing's weekly Krispy Kreme doughnut. 

"It was incredible. It's just a terrible feeling," Mr Rushing recalled.

The police officer who made the arrest wrote in their report ""I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic."

Mr Rushing tried to explain to the officers that they were looking at flakes of doughnut glazing, to no avail. 

"I kept telling them, 'That's … glaze from a doughnut. … They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, 'No, it's meth, crystal meth.'"

Mr Rushing spent 10 hours in jail before being released on a $2,500 bond. He now says he intends to sue the city for damages. 

This article was corrected at 11.07am to correctly spell Mr Rushing's surname.