Baltimore Police Officer Caught Planting Evidence
Baltimore Police Officer Richard Pinheiro can be seen on his own body cam planting drug evidence at a crime scene in alley, walking out to the street, and going back to discover the planted evidence. The video footage caused the prosecutor to drop the case against the defendant and other cases where officer Pinheiro and his partners were involved are now in question.
Reporting of this incident comes after Justine Damond was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota and no camera footage was available because neither the body cams or the dash cam were turned on.
Both these incidents highlight two separate but parallel issues, police conduct and body/dash cameras and how they are used. In terms of police conduct or in the case of Officer Pinheiro, misconduct we have to wonder how often evidence is planted and people are convicted based off fruit from the poisonous tree. How many times has officer Pinheiro done something similar, and then had his testimony used to put someone in prison? We can try to excuse the behavior and say the suspect was probably of guilty of something so this okay because it gets him off the streets, but that is a really lazy way to look at criminal justice. Also if you really think that way, if you, your son or daughter were prosecuted that way, would it be acceptable? What about the officers that were with him, how many times have they done something similar with or without officer Pinheiro present? How many other officers have seen them do something similar and not said anything? How wide spread is the issue of planting evidence of in Baltimore?
The police unions and blue lives matter crowd will go the “a few bad apples” statement and see these three officers went rouge and don’t represent the majority of police officers. And while they are correct in that statement, it still doesn’t change the fact that this is problem that needs to be dealt with. There are over 765,000 police officer across the United States, if even 1% of those officers are dirty, that’s 7’650 men and women with a badge and a gun with the potential to ruin thousands of lives. Officer misconduct needs to be addressed at every level because the ripple effect, even with one officer can impact hundreds of lives.
I mentioned body/dash cams as a separate issue tied to the conduct of officers. And this is a more complicated issue. Many who don’t understand the technology, or budgets will tell you that body cams should be on at all times for all officers every where. In a perfect world this is true, but in reality this unlikely and not feasible. The biggest problem is storage. Video takes up massive space on a server. Don’t believe me, look at the storage capacity on your cell phone before recording a 30 minute video then look at it after. A police officer’s shift can last from 8 to 12 hours, even more if they work over time. Even if we go with the minimum, we’re looking at 8 hours for every officer, every day of the year, every year? Cities like New York and Chicago would require massive servers that would be incredibly expensive to store and maintain. We’re talking millions of hours footage, how do you tag it, how long do you keep it, how do you safe guard it? We live in an age where people argue over 3 point shots and touch down catches they see on television with 15 different camera angles, so while cameras are useful and should be worn, they are not the answer, but they are part of the answer.
My solution on cameras is that they should come on when officers receive a call about a situation and start in route of the situation to initiate their investigation. Once the issue is resolved, the cameras can turn off. Coming up with a defined meaning of initiating a response to a call and a resolved situation will potentially cause additional issues, but it’s a start.
I’ve said this on our podcast and I’ll say it again here, wanting police to be held accountable for misconduct, and reforms to reduce misconduct, is not anti-police. It is actually all pro-police, but it is against, bad behavior, and bad police officers. As strange as it may seem, supporting police, and wanting police reform can exist on parallel planes.
The city of Baltimore has launched an investigation after body cam footage from a city police officer appearing to plant drugs at an arrest location.
The video, from a January arrest, is from the body camera of Baltimore Police Officer Richard Pinheiro, who is seen planting a bag of pills in a tin can while two other officers look on. The footage was evidence in a case that was scheduled for last week, but prosecutors wound up droping the case after being contacted by a public defender who was reviewing the footage in preparation for court.
Baltimore’s Office of the Public Defender is now demanding that dozens of cases, where Pinheiro and his two colleagues were the arresting officers, be dropped by the Prosecutor’s Office.
“The officers involved are still witnesses in other active cases that are currently being pursued for prosecution in Baltimore City Circuit Court. The officer whose camera shows him planting the drugs, Officer Richard Pinheiro, is a witness in approximately 53 active cases,” reads a statement released by the Office of the Public Defender. “The prosecutor claimed to be ‘appalled’ by the video and dropped the charges in that case, but no clear policy has been taken in other cases involving these officers.”
The release also points out that Pinheiro was called to testify in another case the following week without any disclosure of this videotape.
“Officer misconduct has been a pervasive issue at the Baltimore Police Department, which is exacerbated by the lack of accountability.” Debbie Katz Levi, head of the Baltimore Public Defender’s Special Litigation Section said in a statement. “We have long supported the use of police body cameras to help identify police misconduct, but such footage is meaningless if prosecutors continue to rely on these officers, especially if they do so without disclosing their bad acts.”
Steve
Steve is an affordable multifamily housing professional that is also the co-founder of Whiskey Congress. Steve has written for national publications such as The National Marijuana News and other outlets as a guest blogger on topics covering sports, politics, and cannabis. Steve loves whiskey, cigars, and uses powerlifting as an outlet to deal with the fact that no one listens to his brilliant ideas.
