A Baltimore police officer accidentally recorded himself planting drugs at a crime scene

[ABX]

It’s not especially rare to hear stories of a police officer abusing his power. But it is pretty rare to see a story in which the cop actually records himself doing it.

That’s what seemed to happen in Baltimore recently, when a police officer appeared to accidentally record himself planting drugs at a crime scene. In the January 2017 video, reported by Fox Baltimore, officer Richard Pinheiro puts a bag of pills under some trash in an alley. He then walks to the street. He then switches on his camera, walks back to the alley, and acts like he just found the drugs for the first time.....

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/19/15999806/baltimore-police-body-camera

[RoosGirl]

Was it so they could seize assets though?

[INVAR]

And just think - Sessions just green-lit the Federales to institute a national Civil Asset Forfeiture Industry with people like this as the foot soldiers, everyone getting to obtain a cut of the 'loot' as long as drug charges or even the suspicion of drugs are levied.

[INVAR]

Was it so they could seize assets though?

You beat me to posting the thought!

[RoosGirl]

You beat me to posting the thought!

Wasn't fair, you had a more complete thought about it than I did.  Good thing I can't post in grunts and clicks, though I come awfully close sometimes. :)

[Frank Cannon]

Planting drugs in one of the most drugged up cities around. Unbelievable.

[Smokin Joe]

And just think - Sessions just green-lit the Federales to institute a national Civil Asset Forfeiture Industry with people like this as the foot soldiers, everyone getting to obtain a cut of the 'loot' as long as drug charges or even the suspicion of drugs are levied.

Yep. and with a 'hit' of crack, or heroin relatively small and easy to conceal,





or




just might be found, whether it was in that nice car or not.

(Note to self, no more glazed donuts in the vehicle, some of that stuff looks like a crumb of icing.)

[INVAR]

Yep. and with a 'hit' of crack, or heroin relatively small and easy to conceal,

just might be found, whether it was in that nice car or not.

Or nice house.

Or nice boat.

Or both.

Doesn't matter who owns it or lives in it. 

The spoils belong to those who decided you didn't need them anymore.

The accusation or even the potential of any item or thing (like cash on hand) being used for nefarious purposes is automatically grounds for forfeiture. 

Got some firearms in a nice safe somewhere?  Well - these boys in blue can pop one or two of these tiny baggies in a flower pot outside and WHAMMO!  You lose everything, including house, car, kids and all your bank accounts seized with firearm enhanced drug charges.  You won't even have funds to hire an attorney to defend yourself, which is how they get away with this criminal enterprise right now.

Except now Sessions has made it National.

[Wingnut]

  Good thing I can't post in grunts and clicks, though I come awfully close sometimes. :)

I resemble that remark!
 

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

But he didn't plant it on someone. Just planted it to make himself look like a hero?

Do I have that right?

Beyond stupid in any case.

[Smokin Joe]

But he didn't plant it on someone. Just planted it to make himself look like a hero?

Do I have that right?

Beyond stupid in any case.

Which begs the question of where he got it? Was he illegally in possession of large quantities of controlled dangerous substances?

[mountaineer]

More on the story:

...  The commissioner then laid out the circumstances of the event with full video footage from the incident, and things got more bizarre.

On January 24, the officers witnessed what appeared to be a drug transaction. As the buyer was leaving in his vehicle, officers stopped him and had him hand over the drugs; this was all recorded.

The buyer provided information on the seller and how he purchased the drugs. Officers then contacted the seller and arrested him, and the seller admitted to be in possession of “grass,” and “something else.” A search on video showed that he was found in possession of marijuana and a small amount of heroin.

Officers then went to the buy location to try to find where the drug stash was. Officers could be seen on video searching a yard and finding a drug stash.

The officers then turned off their body cameras off for five minutes and the final video shows the officer “discovering” the drugs that he had placed on the ground. Drugs which appear to be the same drugs found in the yard five minutes prior.

Based on the other video, we know that both the buyer and seller were found in actual possession of the drugs, and the seller admitted to possession of the drugs. Then when officers went to find the stash, they found the drugs that they were looking for before an officer reset the scene.

Rather than an officer planting drugs, it now appears that the officer re-staged the scene to fabricate the moment that the drugs were found in order to document it better on camera.

If that’s the case, then this is falsifying a report, and it’s not good. Officers cannot re-stage scenes and pass it off as an original.  ...

Blue Lives Matter

[Smokin Joe]

@mountaineer  To what purpose would the officers stage the discovery? I'm not confident of the veracity of that story.

[goatprairie]

@mountaineer  To what purpose would the officers stage the discovery? I'm not confident of the veracity of that story.

This is from Vox.com.  Anything from them is subject to careful scrutiny.  Yes, there are crooked cops. But until I get confirmation from a reliable source,  I don't much pay serious attention to anything a lib website claims.

[mountaineer]

The story I posted was from BlueLivesMatter, a pro-cop site, which pointed out that what he did - if he really did try to "recreate" the discovery of the contraband - was stupid.

[unite for individuality]

And just think - Sessions just green-lit the Federales to institute a national Civil Asset Forfeiture Industry with people like this as the foot soldiers, everyone getting to obtain a cut of the 'loot' as long as drug charges or even the suspicion of drugs are levied.

Here's how great an atrocity the civil forfeiture racket is:

       Civil forfeiture has critics on both the right and the left, largely because of the low burden of proof required to seize a person’s property.

       “The law doesn’t require you to be charged, much less convicted, of any crime [to have your possessions taken],” says Darpana Sheth, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that represents civil forfeiture clients. “And because it’s a civil proceeding, people are not afforded the right to counsel like they would be in a criminal proceeding.”

       That means people have to pay for an attorney to represent them while they try to regain their possessions -- an expense that often exceeds the value of the confiscated goods in the first place.

       “If [the police] take $500 from you during a traffic stop, the legal fees and everything turn out to be more than what you already lost,” says Louis Rulli, a clinical law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading forfeiture expert.

http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-civil-asset-forfeiture-directive-jeff-sessions-police.html

In Bennis v. Michigan,(23) the Supreme Court examined such a forfeiture action under the light of constitutional scrutiny and upheld the confiscation. In Bennis, the Court found that a state forfeiture law that permitted forfeiture of property from an owner who was unaware of its illegal use by another in lawful possession of the property did not offend the constitutional rights of that owner.

Detroit police had arrested John Bennis after observing him engaged in a sexual act with a prostitute in his car, which was jointly owned by Bennis and his wife. After Bennis was convicted of gross indecency, the state had the car declared a public nuisance and abated (forfeited) under state law.

The Circuit Court of Wayne County rejected the wife's challenge to the forfeiture on the grounds that she was innocent of any wrongdoing and that she had no knowledge her husband would use the vehicle to violate the law. Subsequently, on appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld the forfeiture, finding that the state law did not provide for an innocent owner defense, and therefore, the state did not need to prove the owner knew or agreed that the car would be used illegally.(25)

The U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case in order to determine whether Michigan's forfeiture of the vehicle deprived the wife of her interest in the car without due process in violation of the 14th amendment, or if it amounted to a taking of her interest for public use without compensation in violation of the fifth amendment, as incorporated by the 14th amendment. The Court affirmed the decision of the Michigan Supreme Court and upheld the forfeiture.

"Innocent Owner" Defense

Citing a long and unbroken line of cases holding that an owner's interest in property may be forfeited by reason of the property's use, even though the owner was unaware of that use, the Court concluded that the issue is "too firmly fixed in the punitive and remedial jurisprudence of the country to be now displaced."(26) The Court relied on the rationale of earlier decisions to find that even though Mrs. Bennis did not know her car would be used illegally, its forfeiture by the state did not offend the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment.(27) The holdings of the earlier cases cited by the Court have generally been based on the concept that in a civil forfeiture it is the property itself that is being held accountable for its illegal use and thus the "innocence" of the owner is not relevant.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Civil+forfeiture%3a+recent+Supreme+Court+cases.-a018920165