"We gotta find something"

A New York police officer has been caught allegedly planting cannabis inside a driver’s car.

The Intercept uncovered NYPD body cam footage in which a New York Police Department officer appears to plant a nug of cannabis inside the cupholder of the car.

Officer Kyle Erickson and partner Elmer Pastran of the 120th precinct conducted a traffic stop in March 2018, allegedly due to a broken taillight. When the driver rolled down the window, Erickson and Pastran insisted that the car smelled like cannabis and demanded that both occupants get out of the vehicle.

Jason Serrano, who was in the passenger seat, explained that he could “barely move,” lifting his shirt to show the officers the injuries on his torso sustained during a stabbing and subsequent abdominal surgery. When he said he would not allow officers to search his jacket, he was thrown to the ground and placed in handcuffs.

“We gotta find something,” Erickson was captured telling Pastran as he rifled through Serrano’s jacket.

After a search of the car’s interior revealed nothing, an annoyed-sounding Erickson conferred with Pastran. He then appeared to drop something into the drink holder by the front seats, before announcing “I smell a little weed.” Erickson then retrieved the small nug of cannabis he had placed in the holder.

“There’s nothing to say, the video speaks for itself,” Serrano later told The Intercept. “I didn’t have no marijuana, I had no weed, I had no drugs, I wasn’t driving, it wasn’t my car, the taillight wasn’t broken.”

This is not the first time that Erickson stands accused of planting cannabis on a suspect.

In February 2018, Lasou Kuyateh was arrested by Erickson after the officer claimed to have found a joint in Kuyateh’s car. In this case, the body cam mysteriously stopped working seconds before the joint was allegedly discovered, which Erickson chalked up to “technical difficulties.”

After the footage was presented in court during a pretrial hearing, Kuyateh’s case was dismissed and Erickson was advised to hire a lawyer. Kuyateh later filed a lawsuit against the city of New York for $1 million, having spent two weeks in jail.

Despite the footage, the NYPD’s internal affairs division declared that the allegations of police misconduct were “unfounded.”

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