美国国家公共电台 NPR New Baltimore Police Scandal Threatens Criminal Cases

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Hundreds of criminal cases in Baltimore are in jeopardy 1 after two incidents picked up by police body cameras show officers allegedly planting drug evidence. So far more than 40 criminal cases have been dropped because of the videos. The cases mostly involved drug- and weapons-related felonies. Public defenders 4 say hundreds more could end up being dismissed. Police and the state's attorney's office in Baltimore are investigating. The cases also bring up larger questions about the use of police body cam video. NPR's Eric Westervelt has our report.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE 5: When a Baltimore police officer hits record on his body camera, the device saves the preceding 30 seconds but without audio. So it's possible the officer in the first video didn't realize he was being recorded when he appears to place a small baggie filled with white capsules in a trash-strewn lot between homes. He then turns the already recording 6 device on and returns to get the drugs allegedly linked to a suspect already in custody 7. The audio kicks in as his two police colleagues appear to laugh.

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RICHARD PINHEIRO: I'm going to go check here. Hold on.

UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #1: (Laughter).

WESTERVELT: And a second video from a traffic stop appears to show Baltimore officers searching a car a second time and finding baggies of drugs that didn't seem to be there during the first search.

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UNIDENTIFIED OFFICER #2: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah - oh, my God, I knew it.

WESTERVELT: But public defenders discovered the videos, not lawyers in the state's attorney's unit devoted 8 solely 9 to reviewing and disseminating 10 body camera footage. They apparently 11 missed the videos, as did the police unit charged with reviewing hours and hours of body cam footage.

DEBBIE KATZ LEVI: Who's policing the police? And how are these incidents getting past the review unit? There's no excuse for it.

WESTERVELT: That's Debbie Katz Levi, the director of special litigation for Baltimore's Office of the Public Defender 3. Katz Levi says these cases raise deeply troubling questions about what state prosecutors 12 are doing with police body cam evidence before they bring a case to a grand jury.

KATZ LEVI: Are they leaving this out when they go to the grand jury? Those proceedings 13 are secret. We don't know. These two camera footage incidents show us with certainty that incidents of misconduct or alleged 2 misconduct are being missed. So what is the state's attorney's office going to do to fix it? What is the police department going to do to fix it?

WESTERVELT: The police say the internal affairs division is investigating. The Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office says the three officers in the first video are involved in at least 123 criminal arrests. Several dozen of those so far have been dismissed. The public defender's office says it thinks hundreds of other criminal cases may be tossed as well.

A central issue nationally is when officers turn on and off their cameras. Most departments have clear rules, as Baltimore does, that say body cams need to stay on while they're still at the scene of an incident and only turned off if a member of the public requests it. But there's a troubling lack of accountability when officers don't follow those guidelines, says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst 14 with the American Civil Liberties Union.

JAY STANLEY: Around the country, we're seeing big issues in body cameras around access to footage. And also, we're seeing widespread cases of officers not complying with policies, not turning their cameras on when they're supposed to be, turning them off too soon or turning them off in the middle of encounters and not facing any consequences from police management.

WESTERVELT: But Baltimore's police commissioner 15, Kevin Davis, says it's wrong to assume the worst before investigators 16 are done. Davis chalks it up to growing pains of introducing a new technology just 14 months ago.

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COMMISSIONER KEVIN DAVIS: When those gaps in video footage exist, it's ugly. What was there? I don't know. I didn't see it. The camera was on. Now it's off. So does that mean that when the camera was off, some type of criminal misconduct was taking place by police officers? I think that's a conclusion that we just can't jump to.

WESTERVELT: But the problem has cropped up in cities across the country in police arrests, drug cases and fatal shootings. In Minneapolis this summer, an Australian woman was shot and killed by an officer as she approached a squad 17 car after calling 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home. The officer's body camera was not turned on as required by the department. Eric Westervelt, NPR News.