Baltimore Cop Accidentally Films Himself Planting Drugs

File: f_baltimorepdbodycam_170718.nbcnews-ux-1080-600.jpg (73KB, 1067x600px) Image search: [Google]

73KB, 1067x600px

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XMdJWhDfMs
https://archive.is/XkC3b
>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. The public defender’s office identified the officer as Officer Richard Pinheiro.

>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. In a statement issued Wednesday, the public defender’s office said the state’s attorney’s office needs to do more in response to the discovery of the video. It said the officer seen handling the plastic bag in the video is a witness in 53 other active cases. The other two officers in the video also are listed as witnesses in pending cases, it said.