Cop caught planting drugs on his own body cam

[Matt_Crimson]

 It's being alleged that a cop was caught on his own body cam planting drugs. The cop didn't know the camera saves 30 seconds of footage before the camera is actually activated for use.

Quote:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-body-camera-footage-20170719-story.html


Justin Fenton

Baltimore police and prosecutors have launched investigations after being alerted to body camera footage that the public defender's office says shows an officer planting drugs.
The footage is from a January drug arrest. It shows an officer placing a soup can, which holds a plastic bag, into a trash-strewn lot. The officer can then be seen walking to the street, where he flips on his body camera.

“I’m gonna go check here,” the officer says. He returns to the lot and picks up the soup can, removing a plastic bag filled with white capsules.
Police cameras have a feature that saves the 30 seconds of video before activation, but without audio. When the officer is first in the alley, there is no audio until 30 seconds later.


“We take allegations like this very seriously and that’s why we launched an internal investigation into the accusations,” said Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith. “We are fortunate to have body-worn cameras which provide a perspective of the event.”

Police said they will discuss the video — and release more video from the same incident — at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

The public defender’s office flagged the video recently, prompting prosecutors to drop charges against the man arrested and charged for the drugs. He had been in jail since January on a $50,000 bail he was unable to pay, according to attorney Deborah Levi, who is leading a new effort to track police misconduct cases for the public defender’s office.

Levi said prosecutors called the officer just days later as a witness in another case, without disclosing the allegations to the defense attorney in that case.



“You can’t try a case with that guy and not tell anyone about it,” Levi said.

Melba Saunders, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore State’s Attorney's Office, said prosecutors are looking into the video, which she called “troubling.”

Saunders said the prosecutor on the case “took immediate and appropriate actions by dropping the case and alerting his supervisor.”
“Currently this case is under investigation and has been referred to internal affairs of the Baltimore Police Department,” Saunders said
.

Doesn't sound good. These types of things are what cause divide between the public and law enforcement. Assuming this is all true, do you now go back and review all this officers activity and arrests? It's pretty troubling.

[Au165]

(07-19-2017, 02:39 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Doesn't sound good. These types of things are what cause divide between the public and law enforcement. Assuming this is all true, do you now go back and review all this officers activity and arrests? It's pretty troubling.

Well any defense attorney worth a shit probably is. The issue will be most used public defenders so there will need to be an effort by the DA to review all of those arrests now.

[*michaelsean*]

"Red is on? Ohhhhhh"

[GMDino]

(07-19-2017, 02:39 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote:  It's being alleged that a cop was caught on his own body cam planting drugs. The cop didn't know the camera saves 30 seconds of footage before the camera is actually activated for use.





Doesn't sound good. These types of things are what cause divide between the public and law enforcement. Assuming this is all true, do you now go back and review all this officers activity and arrests? It's pretty troubling.

(07-19-2017, 02:48 PM)Au165 Wrote: Well any defense attorney worth a shit probably is. The issue will be most used public defenders so there will need to be an effort by the DA to review all of those arrests now.

Somewhere around here I posted a story about a while bunch of people getting their convictions thrown out because of officers doing this.  And some of the people they set up were bad people, but it was still wrong to do.

I'll see if I can find it.

Edit:  That was easy!  Forgot it was the first post in the thread. 

http://thebengalsboard.com/Thread-Bad-boys-bad-boys-watcha-gonna-do?pid=365817#pid365817

[Belsnickel]

(07-19-2017, 02:48 PM)Au165 Wrote: Well any defense attorney worth a shit probably is. The issue will be most used public defenders so there will need to be an effort by the DA to review all of those arrests now.

Maybe not just that cop, either. You have two others that are on the footage and witnessing it, meaning they were going along with it. All three of them could face scrutiny over this in all their past cases.

[Au165]

(07-19-2017, 03:55 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Maybe not just that cop, either. You have two others that are on the footage and witnessing it, meaning they were going along with it. All three of them could face scrutiny over this in all their past cases.

Yea could end up being a department of justice investigation to the department.

[Matt_Crimson]

(07-19-2017, 03:55 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Maybe not just that cop, either. You have two others that are on the footage and witnessing it, meaning they were going along with it. All three of them could face scrutiny over this in all their past cases.

Yeah that and I wonder why this took so long to be caught. I'm not familiar with how these videos are reviewed but it took 6 months for this to come to light.

[Matt_Crimson]

Update

Quote:With officers' credibility in question, Baltimore dismisses 34 cases



https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/07/28/us/baltimore-drugs-cases-dismissed/index.html



(CNN)More than 30 cases involving three Baltimore police officers who are the subjects of an evidence-planting investigation have been dismissed or are set to be dismissed, the Baltimore City State's Attorney said Friday.

Body camera footage from an arrest in January that appears to show one of the officers hiding drugs at the scene has called the credibility of the trio into question, Marilyn Mosby, State's Attorney for Baltimore City, said.


She said 34 cases will be dismissed while 77 are still being reviewed. Twelve other cases are moving forward. "Where these officers are material and necessary witnesses, we are dismissing those (34) cases, which rely exclusively on the credibility of these officers," she said.


The cases involved felony drug or firearms charges, Chief Counsel Antonio Gioia said.

Read More
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New bodycams start recording with the draw of a gun
The Baltimore Police Department's Internal Affairs division is investigating possible criminal wrongdoing, while the state's attorney office is evaluating what role the officers' testimonies would play in prosecuting cases.

"We have attempted to identify alternative ways to prove those cases where there is independent, corroborative evidence," Mosby told reporters.
The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment Friday night.

Body cam video

The investigations were prompted by the release of body camera video by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender last week.

It shows an officer placing a plastic bag into a food can, then partially hiding it under a piece of debris. Thirty seconds later the audio begins, and the officer says, "I'm going to check here. Hold on," as his colleagues laugh. The officer then gives a cursory look at other items in the debris-strewn lot and appears to stumble onto the drugs in the can.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said last week it was possible that officers were re-enacting the discovery of the drugs.

"It's certainly a possibility that we're looking into to see if the officers in fact replaced drugs that they had already discovered in order to document their discovery with their body-worn cameras on," Davis said.

One officer in the video has been suspended, and two others were placed on administrative duty pending an investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. Two days before the trial date for the drug arrest from the video footage, the public defender brought the video to prosecutors. Prosecutors dismissed the case.

Mosby said Friday that another body camera video has been turned over to Internal Affairs after it was flagged by one of her prosecutors. She didn't give any further details other than it didn't involve the three officers.

[url=https://www.google.com/2017/07/21/us/baltimore-police-guilty-pleas/index.html]
Two Baltimore detectives plead guilty in racketeering case
Long plagued by charges of corruption, the Baltimore Police Department has struggled to win public confidence. In March, seven Baltimore officers were federally charged with robbing citizens, filing false reports and claiming overtime fraudulently. Two of those now-former officers pleaded guilty last week.
Shortly after the charges came down, the commissioner said that the department would be ending plainclothes policing, telling The Baltimore Sun he was concerned that their methods "accelerated a cutting-corners mindset."

Since 2011, Baltimore has paid out more than $13 million to settle lawsuits alleging police misconduct. In April, a federal judge approved a consent decree after a Justice Department report found a wide racial disparity in the way the Baltimore police treat citizens.
CNN's Miguel Marquez, Kylee Tsuru and Sarah Jorgensen contributed to this report.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

You know what's really hilarious?

They were caught because their body cams were on, lol.