Video Not Reeased Yet. From [NyTimes] For the third time in about a month, body-camera video showing “questionable activity” by Baltimore police officers has prompted state prosecutors to dismiss or postpone dozens of criminal cases, the Baltimore City state’s attorney’s office said in a statement this week.
The state attorney’s office did not describe what was captured in this latest video. But it said the footage was brought to the attention of the office by the Baltimore Police Department on Aug. 2 and “was self-reported as a re-enactment of the seizure of evidence.”
State attorneys referred the matter to the Police Department’s internal affairs division.
T.J. Smith, a spokesman for the department, did not respond to questions about the video’s content. “The officer’s status has not changed as a result of the state’s attorney’s press release,” he said in an email on Tuesday.
Two other police body-camera videos that have emerged since mid-July also prompted investigations. Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender said they appeared to show officers planting or manufacturing evidence.
In one, recorded in January, an officer appeared to pretend to find a bag of white capsules after hiding them in an alley just moments before.
In a news conference after that video was released, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said the officer shown might have found illicit drugs while his body camera was not recording, turned his camera on, and then tried to re-enact what happened.
“If evidence was planted, we’ll certainly take assertive action if that’s the case,” Commissioner Davis said, adding that one officer involved was suspended.
A second video, recorded in November 2016, appeared to show an officer finding illicit drugs in a vehicle quickly and easily, minutes after other officers had already completed an exhaustive search.
The state’s attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, said in the statement, which was released on Monday, that whether officers were “planting evidence, re-enacting the seizure of evidence or prematurely turning off the department-issued body-worn camera, those actions misrepresent the truth and undermine public trust.”
Together, the three videos have led state attorneys to review hundreds of criminal cases. Those that relied heavily on the testimonies of officers now under investigation have been dropped by the dozens.
The Baltimore Police Department was already dealing with a public image crisis; seven of its officers were arrested on racketeering charges in March. As a result, at least 77 criminal cases involving those officers were dropped, or are being dropped.
Since the latest body-camera recording was brought to the attention of the state attorney’s office this month, 43 criminal cases relying on the officers involved have been dropped, or are set to be dropped.