Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
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Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
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Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#2What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#3What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
Because once they have "proof" that you're a criminal, then they get greater leeway in what they want to do in terms of searches and detaining you, and even if they turn up nothing, they still have something to charge you with and hang over your head.
Although these days, they don't even need to prove you're a criminal to steal your money with civil asset forfeiture, they just need to be able to find your money.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#4What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
I assume they believe they know who is guilty and just lack the evidence, so they add evidence.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#5What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
The cops believe the people they are framing are bad people^, and need to be put away. They can't find evidence on the bad person, so they plant some.
^ Unfortunately, many of them see everyone who isn't a cop as a bad person - either a threat, or a criminal.
Another reason to plant evidence is if you just brutalized someone. Beating an innocent person for the crime of mouthing off to you/being black looks bad. Beating a junkie carrying a tenth of an ounce of weed... Well, they were a criminal, so it's all good.
And why wouldn't they plant evidence? Your co-workers won't rat you out, nobody will believe the the guy you arrested, and in the unlikely event that you are stupid enough to be planting drugs in front of your own body camera, you will get a paid vacation.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#6What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
I would guess a fair amount is just the whole alpha power dynamics thing. The job attracts a fair amount of people that enjoy the authoritarian role and sticking it to people at will. It's not all of them, but there's certainly a draw for that crowd.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#7What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
Peter Moskos, a criminologist who spent a year on the Baltimore police force while doing his PhD, has a good post up about what happened -- http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-work.ht... It seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally finding the drugs, and so rather than get reprimanded for forgetting to turn on the camera, he decided to recreate the crime scene and pretend he had that he had the camera on the whole time.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#8What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
Peter Moskos, a criminologist who spent a year on the Baltimore police force while doing his PhD, has a good post up about what happened -- http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-work.ht... It seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally finding the drugs, and so rather than get reprimanded for forgetting to turn on the camera, he decided to recreate the crime scene and pret…
he has a theory about what he thinks happened.
But these cameras have a 30 second buffer, and are always recording to that buffer. The buffer is stored when the start button is pressed. That is how he got caught.
So if your camera is off, and you found a stash of drugs. Just press the start button. It'll record you finding the stash 30 seconds earlier.
That's actually why that button exists. So officers have a recording when it's needed unexpectedly.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#9What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
Peter Moskos, a criminologist who spent a year on the Baltimore police force while doing his PhD, has a good post up about what happened -- http://www.copinthehood.com/2017/07/thats-quite-days-work.ht... It seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally finding the drugs, and so rather than get reprimanded for forgetting to turn on the camera, he decided to recreate the crime scene and pret…
>It seems like the officer forgot to turn on his body camera while originally finding the drugs
FTA: "So maybe this was a reenactment based on a true story. This scenario, which is where I would place my money ..."
It's just a guess. And I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that (also FTA) "people in Baltimore City don't get prosecuted for a stash of drugs"; because right in the first paragraph, he says "A man was arrested related to this ... he had been in jail for the past 7 months." In other words, even if the police knew they weren't going to get a prosecution, they could have just wanted to punish this guy, or try and get him to "confess", or who knows what.
Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting
#10What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people? I assume they get some kind of bonus or have a performance review rating on how many "criminals" they apprehend?
> What's the incentive for cops to plant drugs on people?
Paying people to catch criminals incentivizes them to create criminals.