Baltimore Police Under Investigation After Cop Caught Planting Drugs in Body Cam Recording
An officer on the Baltimore Police Department was caught planting evidence while in an active crime scene. The footage was caught via the officer’s body camera and showed the officer hiding drugs before proceeding to investigate the scene. This week, Wednesday (July 19), Fox 45 shared the footage of the officer with the public.
The officer in question is Richard Pinheiro. The footage was recorded back in January and showed Pinheiro along with two other officers in an alleyway alongside a house. The body camera footage revealed that Pinheiro concealing a bag of pills beneath a pile of trash.
Afterwards, the police went back to the street where the sidewalk was in front of the home. Pinheiro then turned his body camera on manually. What he didn’t know was that the body cam actually records up to 30 seconds of footage, even before the camera becomes manually activated. Hence why the officer’s misdeeds were captured for the world to see even before he made a move to hit record.
And like acting out a scene of a movie, Pinheiro can then be heard telling the officers, “I’m going to check here,” while heading towards the back of the home.
He proceeded to the same trash can where he hid the pills moments earlier and pretended to go through the trash. A few seconds go by and Pinheiro finds the bag he initially hid. From there, he called out to the officers.
Footage shows officer placing drugs in trash; goes out to street, turns on camera, returns. Cams save 30 sec prior to activation, w/o sound pic.twitter.com/5ZW128lWFM
— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) July 19, 2017
This week, the defendant wrongfully charged in the drug case that this planted evidence affected was slated to go to trial. Thankfully, charges were dropped once a public defender saw the footage and made the state prosecutor aware of this newfound evidence exonerating her client.
As for the Baltimore PD, authorities are currently investigating this matter. It has been reported that one officer is on suspension while the other two involved have been placed on administrative leave.
The BPD shared in a statement, “We take allegations like this very seriously and that’s why we launched an internal investigation into the accusations. We are fortunate to have Body Worn Cameras, which provide a perspective of the events reported.”
Photo Credit: iStock
