Baltimore Police have had a pretty bad run in the past couple of years. First, the Freddy Gray incident occurred back in 2015, which sparked riots across the city and called for a reform in the Baltimore Police department. One of these reforms created a new requirement for Baltimore Police Officers to wear body cameras when they are on patrol to document their interactions and give more accountability for their actions. However, in the past few weeks there have been multiple incident of police officers planting drugs on civilians.
The most recent case, a 35 year old woman named Shamere Collins, was arrested on drug charges with marijuana and heroin possession after believing they smelled marijuana in the car. After reviewing the police body cams a little bit further, it seems as if the police staged the finding of the drugs. In the beginning of the body cam footage, an officer is seen checking the front seat of the vehicle for a minute. And then 30 minutes later, there are officers standing around the front door of the car, for about 30 seconds, while the audio of the video kicks in (30 second delay). Once the audio kicks in, they decide to search the car, and almost immediately the officers find the drugs.
John Insley, a local defense attorney, who is representing Shamere Collins, released the footage on Tuesday, August 2nd. He has since acknowledged that he will be pursuing legal action against the police department regarding the drug placements. Besides this being a very terrible incident and frightening to regular citizens of Baltimore, what legal implications does this bring?
It destroys credibility. The other cases that these officers are involved in, are now in jeopardy of being dismissed. In a previous, similar incident, an officer Richard Pinheiro was caught on a body camera planting a bag of drugs in the backyard of a person’s house. Baltimore State Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, has dropped 41 felony drug and gun cases, 55 more are under review, and 27 have moved forward based on the strength of the evidence.
Since the release of these two different videos, the Baltimore Police Department has reminded all officers to turn on their body cameras at every call that is enforcement related and should remain on until all searches are conducted. And that these officers should by no means try to re-enact the finding of evidence that was found off camera.
We hope that these cases will come to justice, and if you find yourself in any trouble with the police,don’t hesitate to call the Law Offices of Nick Del Pizzo today!