Rocah criticized the state's attorney's office for "the total lack of any apparent systemic response" to the incident, including putting the officer on the stand in another case after the video was flagged. The other two officers in the video also are listed as witnesses in pending cases, the office said.ĭavid Rocah, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, said that even "a faked recreation of officers finding the untied bag of drugs" would still be "potentially criminal" and should be a violation of police rules. It said in a statement that the officer seen handling the plastic bag in the video is a witness in 53 other active cases.
The public defender's office said the state's attorney's office needs to do more in response to the discovery of the video. There's going to be a lot more done to get to the bottom of what really happened." But that's not the complete investigation. "Everyone needs to take a deep breath, take a step back, and let the investigation run its course," he said. Gene Ryan, president of the local police union that represents rank-and-file officers, urged people not to "jump to conclusions."
"It's certainly a possibility that we're looking into, to see if the officers in fact replaced drugs that they had already discovered in order to document their discovery with their body-worn cameras on," he said. "So when these experienced detectives found a bag with a knot at the top, that suggested to them that there's probably an un-knotted bag nearby, because the drug dealers won't unknot and then re-knot a bag every time they go retrieve drugs from it to distribute."ĭavis said police were investigating whether the video flagged by the public defender's office showed the officer "re-creating" his discovery of the second, un-knotted bag of drugs. "If I'm engaged in the distribution of drugs, I'll probably have two bags: one with a knot at the top, and one that's unknotted at the top that allows me access to the drugs inside the bag so I can easily retrieve them and then sell or distribute them," Davis said.
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