The recently released bodycam footage of bumbling, clueless, Baltimore officer Richard Pinheiro planting evidence is almost too good to be true for advocates of police transparency. Pinheiro, not realizing that his bodycam was already recording, only without audio, is seen planting a can of drugs while his badged companions tag along. They then walk away, when Pinheiro “activates” his bodycam and tells his fellow officers that they should go back and look again, where they “discover” the can of drugs. This “discovery” led the an arrest and heroin charge against the man they were targeting. But, and thankfully for us, Pinheiro is not a genius, and he didn’t realize that the previous 30 seconds of footage was automatically saved. The charges against the arrested man were dropped, but, since he couldn’t post bail, he languished in a jail cell for six months.
The larger question is this: how often do cops plant evidence or otherwise distort facts to frame the innocent? The casual behavior of the officers in the video suggest this may be far more common than is thought.
The fate of thousands are in the hands of authorities like Pinheiro and crime lab tech Dookhan, and they had no moral qualms about using their power to ruin the lives of innocents.
