Baltimore police officers accidentally filmed themselves seemingly planting evidence again
Source: Vox
The local prosecutor has been forced to pull dozens of cases involving the officers due to the misconduct.
Updated by German Lopez@germanrlopezgerman.lopez@vox.com Aug 2, 2017, 4:50pm EDT
It was only a couple of weeks ago that a Baltimore police officer’s newly unveiled body camera footage showed him planting evidence at a supposed crime scene. But just two weeks later, we now have more video of a totally different set of officers appearing to do the same thing.
The video, released by the Baltimore public defender’s office, shows officers allegedly placing drugs in a car. The officers searched the scene, they said, after they supposedly witnessed a drug deal. In the video, the officers are shown thoroughly searching a car — apparently finding nothing. The cameras are then turned off. But they turn on a bit later, showing an officer squatting by the car. After a while, the officer backs off. Then 30 seconds later, another cop searches the same spot the officer was squatting at, and — suddenly! — finds a bag of drugs.
The earlier video told a similar story. In it, officer Richard Pinheiro puts a bag of pills under some trash in an alley. He then walks to the street. He then activates his camera (failing to recognize that it picks up the previous 30 seconds), walks back to the alley, and acts like he just found the drugs for the first time.
The videos have already led the Baltimore prosecutor to drop dozens of cases involving the officers, and many more are under review. They also led to a bizarre statement from the Baltimore police commissioner in which he actually had to ask his officers to not stage body camera footage.
Read more: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/2/16086136/baltimore-police-evidence-planting
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