Video Shows Baltimore Police Officer Planting Drugs At Scene
A Baltimore police officer named Richard Pinheiro was suspended Wednesday and charges against a suspected drug dealer were dropped after body camera footage appeared to show the officer planting a bag of illicit drugs at the scene of the drug dealer's arrest in January, according to Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender.
Two other officers were also present during the incident who have been put on desk duty till an internal investigation is ongoing.
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The 90 seconds video clip recorded on Jan. 24 was released by the office of the public defender Office of the Public Defender this week. It appeared to show Pinheiro placing a plastic bag full of white capsules in a neighborhood in Baltimore while two officers looked on and took no action. The officer then walks back to the street, before announcing that he is returning to check the alley. The footage shows him searching the same place and finding the same can he had just been handling a while ago.
The man arrested on drug charges linked to the video, whose name was not released, had been set for trial last week. The State Attorney’s Office dropped the case after the disclosure of the video. The man was jailed for nearly six months.
Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender said in a press release on Wednesday that an assistant public defender first disclosed the video and brought it to the attention of state prosecutors last week. It added that “the officers involved are still witnesses in other active cases that are currently being pursued 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.”
Pinheiro began his career as a police officer in March 2011, according to records obtained by the Baltimore Sun. Pinheiro hails from Federalsburg, Maryland, according to a 2008 article in the Star-Democrat newspaper, which detailed his stint as a bull rider when he was a teenager. Pinheiro completed his graduation from North Dorchester High School in Hurlock, Maryland, in 2006. He then went on to work construction at Spedden Marine in Cambridge after graduating, before he became a police officer, the newspaper reported.
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“This is a serious allegation of police misconduct,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said.
“There’s nothing that deteriorates the trust of any community more than thinking for one second that uniformed police officers, or police officers in general, would plant evidence of crimes on citizens. That’s as serious as it gets,” he added, the New York Times reported.
However, he did not rule out the idea that the officers could have done that in order to document their discovery. Davis told reporters at a news conference Wednesday that his department is “looking to see if the officers, in fact, replaced drugs they had already discovered in order to document the discovery with their body-worn cameras.”
“It’s certainly a possibility,” he said, adding “that’s certainly a consideration.”
But he said, the footage at first instance, appeared to show activities that were “inconsistent with the way police officers do business,” even if it were a reenactment of the incident for documentation.
“I’m convinced we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he added. “If evidence was planted, we’ll certainly take assertive action if that’s the case,” Davis concluded, according to CBS News.
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