Further Evidence That Baltimore Police Department Officers Planted Drugs in the Shamere Collins Case
Here’s a basic description of the arrest, per the Baltimore Sun’s review of case documents:
Shamere Collins, 35, was arrested on Nov. 29, 2016 after police stopped her vehicle after observing a passenger conducting what officers believed was a drug deal, according to case records. After stopping the vehicle, police said they smelled marijuana, searched the car, and recovered heroin and marijuana. Charges were filed against Collins and the passenger.
Charges were dropped against both Collins and her co-defendant earlier this week based on body-cam footage which, according to the public defender in the case, “appears to depict multiple officers working together to manufacture evidence.” After searching the car and finding NOTHING, the officers in question turned their cameras off — which they are NOT supposed to do — and then back on. Here’s what happens next, according to the OPD’s statement:
“When the cameras come back on one officer is seen squatting by the driver’s seat area. The group of officers then wait approximately 30 seconds. Shortly thereafter, another officer asks if the area by that compartment has been searched. Nobody responds, and the officer reaches in and locates a bag that appears to contain drugs right by where the prior officer was, and where the car had been thoroughly searched about a half an hour prior with absolutely no results.”
Police Commissioner Kevin Davis has been insistent that no one should “jump to conclusions” about what the footage indicates about the officers’ behavior — because they may have been “reenacting evidence discovery” not evidence planting. He also maintains that “there’s no doubt” drugs were legitimately recovered in this case — an incredible statement to make considering he was not there and the body-cam footage shows the opposite.
Speaking of the officers, the Baltimore Sun’s Kevin Rector wrote that the “officers in the video have not been named.” This is true-ish — but while we don’t know which officer is which in the video, we do know which officers were involved because their names are listed on the online court records (left).
There’s more to learn about this case from publicly available records. Open Baltimore’s BPD Arrests dataset records the most serious charge of those processed at Baltimore’s Central Booking — Collins and her codefendant, while not named, are listed as arrestees on November 29, 2016. (Their ages and incident/arrest locations are a match.) Interestingly, the top charge for both is PWID — or Possession With Intent to Distribute — cocaine.
The timing of the arrest — 6:25pm — is approximate; the incident actually began at 6:37 pm, according to Open Baltimore’s 911 dataset, which records both 911 calls from citizens and other incidents requiring police response.
I filed an MPIA request for the computer automated dispatch report, or CAD report, for this incident, knowing it would show the movements of the involved officers according to what they conveyed to the dispatcher. This CAD report also lists the criminal complaint (CC or case) number associated with this incident, which is also listed on the Circuit Court records:
First, let’s talk about the timing on the videos. Via the Baltimore Sun:
In one video, time-stamped about 11:50 p.m., an officer is seen searching the driver’s side. He spends about a minute searching the area, finding nothing.
In a second video, time-stamped about 12:20 a.m., officers are seen standing around as one officer asks if anyone had searched the area near the driver’s seat. He begins searching and almost immediately comes up with a bag of alleged drugs.
In a third video, also time-stamped about 12:20 a.m. and recorded from the body camera of the officer conducting the search, the officer can be seen pulling the bag from the driver’s seat area, which he suggests contains marijuana and other drugs.
Police said the officer who found the drugs was not the same officer who had initially searched the driver’s area, and had a better sense of where to search because he had been conducting surveillance prior to the traffic stop.
Clearly, something is off about these timestamps, right? What the Sun doesn’t seem to realize is that BPD’s body-cams are set to UTC time. Here’s a screenshot of one video, showing the timestamp — the Z at the end indicates UTC time:
Baltimore is on East Coast time, which is five hours behind UTC time. So, the video timestamped 11:50 pm UTC is actually 6:50 pm EST, and the two videos timestamped with 12:20 am UTC, are actually 7:20 pm EST. I have alerted Rector to this error multiple times — not his fault, as BPD should have made it clear — but he has yet to correct his two-day-old article.
So, back to the videos. Officer A’s 6:50 pm search of the car, specifically the driver’s side of the vehicle, failed to recover any drugs. The bodycams were turned off, and then at 7:20 pm, another search was conducted by Officer B, who quickly recovered a bunch of drugs from the exact same spot Officer A searched. Officer B was not present at the scene for Officer A’s search, but according to BPD, per the Sun, “he had a better sense of where to search because he had been conducting surveillance prior to the traffic stop.”
Officer B, according to a source familiar with the case, is Glenn Peters, who was working in plainclothes and doing surveillance in an unmarked car, and initiated the call to dispatch at 6:37 pm. He is also the arresting officer in this case. There are no names on the CAD report, but there are six unit numbers, mostly Southeastern District patrol (2C24; 2C41; 2C32), plus a van driver (2C91) and two plainclothes units (2053; 2050). The primary unit and the unit which initiated the call is 2053, which I think we can safely assume to be Peters. He was likely doing surveillance with the other plainclothes unit, 2050, but I’m not sure which officer that is. (Note: There are 7 cops listed on the court records, but just six cops on the CAD report. Why, I don’t know.)
CAD reports can look like nothing but numbers and weird acronyms if you’re not familiar with how to read them. I’m just gonna focus on the timing of a few actions rather than an in depth analysis for now — until I know which officer is which unit and have the probable cause report detailing their alleged involvement, I can’t really do much more. I’ve highlighted the actions I’m going to focus on that, I believe, further refute the legitimacy of these arrests/charges.
Within a minute of unit 2053 initiating the call to dispatch — allegedly after witnessing what he believed to be a drug transaction — four backup patrol officers were dispatched to the scene … including a wagon driver (2c91).
Unit 2053 must have been confident that he would have a prisoner or prisoners to transport if he called them to the scene before a search had even been conducted.
Then, approximately 19 minutes later, the wagon driver alerts dispatch that they are transporting two prisoners, a male and a female, to the Southeastern District Station, and communicates their starting mileage (S/M 307).
“Those drugs were not in that car when we were pulled out,” Shamere Collins told the Baltimore Sun. She’s right. So why were Collins and her companion being taken into custody if, at 6:50 pm, a search of their car recovered no drugs? [UPDATE: The probable cause statement, posted here, indicates a relatively small amount cocaine and marijuana was recovered from Collins’ purse/person before they were arrested/transported.]
Then, at 7:01 pm, just a few minutes after the wagon left the scene with Collins and her companion locked inside, unit 2053 requested a criminal complaint number (also known as a CC or case number).
So, 11 minutes after no drugs are found in the car, and a few minutes after the two passengers were handcuffed and taken into custody anyway, unit 2053 requested a case number for “narcotics on view.” What narcotics? It’s as if unit 2053 knows that drugs WILL be found … by him, in 19 or so minutes, when their bodycams are turned back on.
