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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

While I think the cop in the video deserves discipline and/or dismissal and/or criminal charges, and the person accused deserves a stronger than usual presumption of innocence, the video is not hard evidence that the cop planted drugs. He may have been simply recreating his previous discovery of the drugs.

I've watched lots of youtube videos of rock hunters recreating their discoveries on camera for the sake of drama and upvotes, often admitting it. Police are surely affected by similar incentives.

The above argument is brought to you by someone who thinks that all drugs should be legalized, and that all cops who work to enforce drug laws are acting immorally.

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Someone re-enacting a scene for entertainment purposes is one thing. The police should absolutely not be "recreating" events and passing them off as the actual occurrence. This is one step away from using reenactments on Unsolved Mysteries as actual evidence for the crime. Whatever bits the cop wanted to add in or leave out, if it became acceptable for them to recreate evidence in this way, how would we ever be able to manage that?

Seems like most people agree that this behavior is bogus, and that cops shouldn't be fabricating or recreating evidence. And even if some do-gooder was doing so innocently, they probably shouldn't forget to mention that that video was a recreation, not actual evidence. That's an oops that cop and his dept will have to address while they're making excuses for it.

That strikes me as a very, very generous assumption. Even assuming this were the case, it still seems to me akin to perjury, that is, instead of being up front about what they are doing "I am recreating how and where I found these" rather than deliberately putting on an act.

I understand that you say you still believe the officer was wrong to do so, but I think this should be sufficient evidence to assume innocence here.

If cops starts acting to get YouTube popularity, geez, where are we going ????

Of course he didn't. Don't hide your head in the sand.

If you're a cop, and discover evidence and realize later it wasn't captured, that's how you report the events. You don't falsify evidence. The only incentive was to strengthen a guilty verdict by falsifying evidence.

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