In Baltimore, of course, wholesomeness capital of the US. Officer Richard Pinheiro thought his body camera was off when he had tossed the baggie into a debris pile. But what he didn’t know is that the cameras have a pre-record cycle that continuously records and saves the data with a retroactive 30 second timer. There’s no audio during the first 30 seconds of the pre-record, but you can clearly see Officer Pinheiro toss the baggie into the pile, walk to the sidewalk to turn on his body camera, then stumble into the debris pile, poke around, then miraculously find a baggie of heroin which he was pinning on a suspect.

The two complicit officers are Hovhannes Simonyan and Jamal Brunson. They observe this action and do nothing, say nothing.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis says “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.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

The public defender’s office flagged the video for prosecutors last week, prompting prosecutors to drop the heroin possession charge against the man arrested. TRENDING: Black Lives Matter Activist Wearing 'Justice for Breonna Taylor' Shirt Walked into a Louisville Bar and Murdered Three People The man, unable to post $50,000 bail, had been in jail since January, according to attorney Deborah Levi, who is leading a new effort to track police misconduct cases for the public defender’s office.

Lt. Gene Ryan, president of the local police union that represents rank-and-file officers, urged people not to “jump to conclusions.” “Everyone needs to take a deep breath, take a step back, and let the investigation run its course,” he said. “First impression, it doesn’t look good. But that’s not the complete investigation. There’s going to be a lot more done to get to the bottom of what really happened.” The public defender’s office said the state’s attorney’s office needs to do more in response to the discovery of the video. 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 other two officers in the video also are listed as witnesses in pending cases, the office said.