Baltimore Police Officer Charged With Fabricating Evidence in Drug Case

A Baltimore police officer has been indicted on criminal charges after a body camera video taken a year ago appeared to show him staging the discovery of a bag of illicit drugs near an arrest scene.

The video ignited outrage in July when it was released by Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender. It was recorded Jan. 24, 2017, and seems to show the officer, Richard A. Pinheiro Jr., placing a bag of white capsules inside a can in an alley. The officer can then be seen walking back to the street, at which point he appears to switch on his body camera and announce that he is going to search the alley.

The video shows him returning to the alley to find the bag he had just placed there.

The body cameras used by the Baltimore Police Department retain visual recordings beginning 30 seconds before the cameras are manually switched on.

It remains unclear whether the Jan. 24 footage shows an attempt to plant evidence or a re-enactment of an event that had already occurred off-camera.

During the episode, a man was arrested on drug dealing charges. But they were dropped after the video became public, and Pinheiro was suspended with pay from the Police Department.

On Tuesday, the officer was indicted by a grand jury on charges of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, a misdemeanor, and common law misconduct in office. A spokeswoman for the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office said that an arraignment was scheduled for February.

“Officer Pinheiro simply tried to document the recovery of evidence with his body-worn camera that he had previously recovered,” Michael Davey, a defense lawyer, told The Baltimore Sun. “This is just another overreach by the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, and an attempt to prosecute a police officer when there’s no evidence to do so.”

The Baltimore Police Department was made aware of the charges on Wednesday, T.J. Smith, a department spokesman, said in an email.

After the video involving Pinheiro came to light, the Police Department changed its policy to ensure that officers keep their body cameras on from the beginning of an event until it is over, he said.

Around the same time that Pinheiro’s video was released, two more videos showing “questionable activity by a member of the Baltimore Police Department” surfaced, the state’s attorney’s office said in a statement.

Together, the three videos led prosecutors to review hundreds of criminal cases. Those that relied heavily on the testimonies of officers under investigation were dropped by the dozens. The Baltimore Police Department had already been dealing with a public image crisis after seven of its officers were arrested on racketeering charges in March.

“As state’s attorney, I’ve made a pledge to apply one standard of justice for all,” Marilyn J. Mosby, Baltimore’s state’s attorney, said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s critical we remain transparent throughout the process to the extent the law allows as we continue to rebuild community trust.”

“Yesterday’s indictment,” she said, “is another example of our office applying justice fairly and equally.”