Criminal defense attorneys, and I suspect district attorneys and judges, have long doubted consent searches. In a consent search the police avoid getting a search warrant by obtaining consent of the person being searched or of the person in possession of the house or car. But these searches are easy to fabricate. There are often no witnesses and its the officer’s word against the defendant’s.

But there is little we can do. The question at trial is not the truth but who can prove their case. We know that the jury is generally more likely to believe a police officer (or five police officers) who testify that our poor 19 year old African American or Latino consented to the search than to believe our client when he or she says they did not consent to the search. This is true even in the senseless situation where the officers find rock cocaine or heroin viewable on the bed or dresser.

Certainly not all consent searches are phoney. People don’t always do wise things.There is no requirement that the police tell a person that they need not consent and people, particularly those from abroad who are not used to the Bill of Rights often consent. Whether the consent is real or not it is often followed by a plea bargain because the police office, who is a professional witness can convince the court and a jury that the defendant consented to the search.

But with the advent of videos things may change. The San Francisco Public Defender’s office has four video tapes taken at the Henry Hotel of police officers entering rooms without consent and later filing police reports in which they state under oath that they received consent to the search. The officers involved are members of the Southern Station plainclothes unit. The District Attorney has already dropped 57 cases as a result of the allegations. An investigation of the unit and its sergeant is occurring. These are serious allegations. Filing a false police report is a misdemeanor and perjury is a felony. If true, these charges are significant violations of people’s Fourth Amendment rights and justly call into question the trustworthiness of numerous other investigations conduct by the unit and by other officers.

The story started out with two former Antioch, California police officers, Norman Wielsch, who was the head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and Christopher Butler, who now has a private detective agency, being arrested on drug charges. It was alleged that Wielsch stole drugs from CNET and provided them to Butler who sold them and presumably shared the profits. Twenty-eight felony charges are pending against Wielsch and Butler. Dirty cops–big deal. But as the story has evolved it turns out that Butler represented some women in child custody matters. In order to get custody for their children and to blacken the fathers, he hired decoys to get the men drunk. Then he arranged for a third former Antioch police officer, Stephen Tanabe, now employed by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department and assigned to Daville to be waiting near the bar and to arrest the fathers for driving under the influence. Tanabe has not been charged with incidents involving the DUI’s. Rather he has been charged with drug and weapons offenses.

CNET’s operations have been suspended pending a state audit.

Wielsch, Butler and Tanabe are now out on bail. But at a bail hearing for Butler the district attorney played a video of Butler kidnapping a boy, with Wielsch present, and stealing 4000 Xanax pills found in the boy’s room to scare him from being involved with drugs. In the video Butler and several of his employees impersonated police officers. Deputy district attorney Jun Fernandez said they may be charged with kidnapping. The Xanax was found when officers searched Butler’s possessions after he was arrested.

Paying to have people arrested is about as corrupt as you can get.

Another police officer has been caught on a cell phone camera beating an unarmed person. San Jose officer Kenneth Siegel was called to an apartment where two roommates were fighting. He arrested Phuong Ho on assault charges. The officer claims that Ho resisted arrest but a third roommate photographed the arrest with his cell phone. It shows numerous hits with a metal baton. At least one of the hits occurred after another officer had placed Ho into handcuffs. While Siegel is beating Ho with the baton another officer is shooting him with a Taser.

Ho is a 20 year old Vietnamese-American student at San Jose State University. He got into a physical fight with a roommate after the roommate put soap on Ho’s steak.

This follows the killing of Oscar Grant by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in nearby Oakland which was also photographed on cell phones. The shooting of Grant also occurred after he was in handcuffs. Mehserle is charged with murder. Likewise, a criminal investigation is being initiated into the shooting of Ho.

San Jose has a large Vietnamese-American community and many members of the community remain upset over the killing of a mentally ill Vietnamese-American, Daniel Pham, by a police officer in May.

Chicago mayor Richard Daley told the ABA conference this week that cameras in police cars will reduce the amount the city will have to pay out in damages for police malfeasance. He may be right. But let’s not forget the case of Raymond Bell who was arrested by Chicago police officer Joe D. Baker, a 23 year veteran of the force, for driving under the influence. According to Baker, Parker staggered when he got out of the car and could not stand on one leg for 30 seconds. The problem with this is that a camera mounted in the police car saw Bell walking straight and taking the field sobriety tests without problem. Case dismissed. While the article by Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune doesn’t mention it, I would not be surprised if Bell is a little richer at the expense of the Chicago taxpayers.

In a Hollywood, Florida case, Officer Joel Francisco ran into a vehicle driven by a Georgetown University student. According to the officer the woman was under the influence but the case was dismissed after the office was heard discussing on a police car video camera with four other officers how to put the blame on the student for the accident. All five were suspended. The accident, by the way, was Francisco’s seventh accident in a police car since 2000.

By the way, Mayor Daley is wrong when he says that the city should not be charged when the police harass citizens in response to rough language on the part of the citizen. The police need to be able to handle a little rough language. Daley ought to have a discussion and a mug of beer with Henry Louis Gates.

The point is not whether the use of cameras in police car will save the city money or cost the city money. Nor is it whether it will result in more convictions or less convictions. The point is that the use of cameras will result in the truth coming out and then we all win.