One of the reforms in the 227-page consent decree agreement was the issuing of body cameras to 500 Baltimore Police Department officers at a cost of $11.6 million. Body cams are supposed to ensure the integrity of engagements between police officers and citizens, while also protecting the rights of both parties.
However, it seems that even with the use of mandatory body cameras, the Baltimore Police Department could be engaging in a pattern of deceitful and inappropriate activities. Multiple videos appear to show Baltimore police officers planting and manufacturing evidence to justify arrests and recorded by their own body cameras.
“The credibility of those officers has now been directly called into question,” Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said in a July 28 press briefing after the videos went viral.
The first case involved a Black woman, Shamere Collins, who was pulled over by Baltimore police on November 29, 2016. The body cam video shows police doing a thorough search of the vehicle Ms. Collins was in and admittedly stating that nothing was found in the car. However, 40 minutes later, another officer conducts a search of the automobile and finds both marijuana and heroin. Ms. Collins was arrested and charged by police, but she was soon exonerated after the body cam video was reviewed by prosecutors who then quickly threw out all the charges and dismissed her case.
In another incident in January of this year, the body camera of Officer Richard Pinheiro recorded him apparently planting drugs at the scene of the July 2016 arrest of 26-year-old Dominque Reed. Mr. Reed was charged with attempted distribution of narcotics and two counts of possession of narcotics. He had been jailed since his arrest and was being held on $50,000 bail until review of Officer Pinheiro’s body cam footage. Charges against Mr. Reed were dropped on August 4, 2017, although he is still being held for violating probation in another case.
Mr. Pinheiro was suspended and the two other officers on the scene with him that day, were placed on administrative leave. In both situations, gaps in recordings off the officer issued body cams led to suspicions that the arrests weren’t made with full integrity.