After a Baltimore police officer's body cam recorded him seemingly planting drugs, police and prosecutors have launched an investigation to discover if the officer(s) involved did so.
In the cam footage from an arrest in January of this year, Baltimore Police Officer Richard Pinheiro appears to place a bag of drugs under a pile of trash before working to the front of the house. Then, he goes back down an alleyway beside the house and pulls out the bag of drugs. For the first 30 second of the footage, the audio doesn't play. Around the last 30 seconds, the audio comes back in.
"I’m going to check here,” Pinheiro says before walking down the alley. He exclaims “yo!” as he holds up a bag of drugs to show to his fellow officers, identified by the Maryland public defender's office as officers Jamal Brunson and Jovannes Simonyan.
According to to the Baltimore Sun, the public defender’s office saw the video and flagged it for prosecutors last week, prompting prosecutors to drop the heroin possession charge against the arrested man. Attorney Deborah Levi told Buzzfeed News that the public defenders' office is looking into all three officers on scene.
As of this report, Pinherio has been suspended and the other two officers are on administrative leave per the Baltimore Sun.
The Balitmore Police Department made a statement on the case in a press conference Wednesday, July 19.