Lawyer says body cam video shows LAPD officer planting drugs

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Michael Balsamo, Associated Press
 Updated 3:54 pm, Friday, November 10, 2017

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police launched an internal investigation Friday after an attorney released body camera video that he says shows an officer planting cocaine in his client's wallet during an arrest.

The video was taken during an arrest in April when officers stopped Ronald Shields, 52, who they suspected had been involved in a hit-and-run crash.

It appears to show an officer standing beside Shields, who is in handcuffs, as another officer leans down and picks up a small baggie filled with white powder — which later tested positive for cocaine — that is on the ground. The officer who picked up the baggie then motions to the second officer, points to Shield's wallet in his hand and appears to place the baggie in the wallet.

The officer then turns on his body camera, but the cameras automatically save the previous 30 seconds when they are switched on.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Lawyer-says-body-cam-video-shows-LAPD-officer-12348384.php

[Iggo]

1. Cops. That's who they are. That's what they do. (n/t)

[C Moon]

2. So the cameras record constantly, even when off? But only save information when they are turned on?

That is scary. I wonder how many innocent people have gone to prison /jail for this kind of crap. Again, that's scary: they are supposed to be upholding the law, instead they are abusing their power to harm innocent citizens (I don't know how innocent that guy was, but this video makes it evident it goes on).

[BumRushDaShow]

3. It sounds like

they are capturing "live" images continually but not recording them, where switching the mode to "on" apparently starts saving the images as a video file.

I know that many IP security cameras do that - where they can stream/broadcast "live" images (snapshots or video) to a remote location but don't have to be set to record/save them. But a certain amount of the live images are cached depending on the memory available and image size/video resolution. So if they are ad hoc manually requested to record (or are activated by motion - the most common way), then some amount of time before the manual or motion activation timeframe is included in the recording and final file.

[MurrayDelph]

4. It just shows

that cops should not have the discretion to turn their cameras off, or that doing so in the middle of an incident voids the evidence and is a firing offense.