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Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

baltimore.cbslocal.com

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Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#21

Post by posguy »

adekok wrote: post #10
Yhippa wrote: post #2

What'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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

Combined with a large subset of people that have a bootlicker mentality, you end up with those that want power and worship those in power planting drugs and instigating crimes that would otherwise not have occurred.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#22

Post by tyingq »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

Maybe also incentives that are something other than number of arrests or citations.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#26

Post by Yhippa »

jdavis703 wrote: post #19
Yhippa wrote: post #2

What'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?

There are many police departments that receive a large chunk of their budgets from anti-drug grants from their states and federal departments like the Department of Justice [0]. Generally, the cops can keep anything they seize in a drug bust such as fancy cars and trucks, cash, weapons, through "civil asset forfeiture"... This is true even if the defendants are found not guilty. Sometimes the seized drugs even wind b…

Cops being able to keep what they find in a drug bust sounds like it creates some horrible incentives and that a policy like that would almost always be negative for the person apprehended.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#27

Post by viraptor »

moretai wrote: post #23

what's the argument against not having body cameras on at all times?

There are some, but also having it on at all times wouldn't solve the underlying issue. Specifically, drugs could be easily planned a few hours before while the cop was not on duty. Or by paying someone else to do it at specific time.

Always-on cameras definitely help in case of bad interactions with people stopped on the street, since those can't be scripted. But anything you can do ahead of time - not so much. It's trying to have a technical solution to a social issue.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#28

Post by na85 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

Frankly I think that anyone who applies to be a cop should be automatically blacklisted, and that police should be essentially conscripted for, say, $total_training_time + 2 years after education, the way some countries do with their military.

To me, the mere act of wanting the authority to arrest and shoot your peers means you are the last person I want to have that power.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#29

Post by toomuchtodo »

na85 wrote: post #28
myrandomcomment wrote: post #20

We need to live in a country where the law enforcement agencies are above reproach. There are 3 things we can do for this. 1. Pay for officers should be high without overtime. 2. Stop militarizing everyday law enforcement. 3. Body cams on at all times. Cameras on police cars should be on at all times.

Frankly I think that anyone who applies to be a cop should be automatically blacklisted, and that police should be essentially conscripted for, say, $total_training_time + 2 years after education, the way some countries do with their military. To me, the mere act of wanting the authority to arrest and shoot your peers means you are the last person I want to have that power.

Politicians as well. Those who seek power rarely have the necessary moral fortitude.

Re: Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting

#30

Post by jschwartzi »

rgbrenner wrote: post #8
devinhelton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 record…

More to the point, why was the officer's camera off in the first place?
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