This past Saturday, a video started going viral that seemed to very clearly show a police officer planting drugs in a car. While the video stops abruptly, it seems to be clear what’s going on, and it looked really bad.
While the video was getting passed around quite a bit and outrage was beginning to stir, the Caledonia police responded quickly and promised to do a full investigation and release all of the available footage. This gave people a chance to catch their breath and wait for all of the facts to come out, and Caledonia indeed released more footage very soon after. You can view the body cam footage from the officer here:
While it indeed shows some procedural issues by the officers in question, the full video explains exactly what happened and why the baggie was tossed back into the car, dispelling all thoughts of “planting evidence”. This further justifies why all officers should have body cams turned on at all times, as it can help to give a full picture of a story, which is good for everyone.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a good overview of what happened, and while I expect we’ll see a bit more come out of this as more footage is released, it was good to see clear heads prevail and not snap to judgement. Taking a minute to collect more information is always a good thing.
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