Much has been said about the use of police body cameras only benefiting cops but those claims have, once again, been proved wrong. Officer Richard Pinheiro Jr., from the Baltimore P. D., was caught red-handed. The police officer was caught planting drugs by his own bodycam in order to fabricate evidence for a drug arrest. It all started when Pinheiro was called in for a drug-related arrest and began to search around for the dealer’s stash. The officer, supposedly, found a bag with drugs inside of a can in an empty lot. But he forgot he was being recorded by his own body camera and that it would tell the undoctored story.
When contacted by prosecutors, officer Pinheiro was honest about the incident and admitted to planting the drugs. But, according to him, it was to re-enact how he had previously found the drugs. Pinheiro’s attorney Chaz Ball claimed the officer didn’t have his camera on when he found the drugs. The reason? He was so eager to solve the case he forgot to turn the camera on. According to Ball, he is “an honest officer who made an honest mistake”. The judge didn’t accept the explanation and gave him a three-year suspended sentence and two years of supervised probation. That probation, however, can be switched to unsupervised after a year if the officer has no compliance issue during the first half of his sentence.
Ever since the use of police body cameras became widely accepted and adopted in the United States, cases like this are being brought to light every day more and more. It further proves that police body cameras are here to serve justice to everyone and it takes no sides. These devices were developed to make sure people are held accountable for their actions by always telling the complete story and they have been serving their purpose since they came out.
As seen on:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-pinheiro-ruling-20181109-story.html