Photo: Getty Images
A Wisconsin police officer is under investigation after a video appears to have caught him planting a plastic bag in a Black man’s car on Thursday (July 21) during a traffic stop.
The man, who goes by Glockboy Savoo, posted a 16-second clip on Facebook which shows the southeast Wisconsin officer throwing a small plastic bag into the backseat of his car while the car appears to be pulled off on the side of the road. The cop then puts on plastic gloves as if he’s about to begin a search of the vehicle.
“Ay bro what’s that?” Savoo asked the officer after he threw the plastic bag into the backseat, to which the officer replied, “What’s what?”
“I got you on camera,” we’re all good,” the officer added. “Ay bro you just threw that in here!” Savoo says.
“Yeah,” a voice off-camera that might be the officer says in response to Savoo before the video ends.
“First time ever seeing a cop try to throw sum on me just to get reason to search the car … he ain’t even know I was recording … you can tell he was nervous,” Savoo captioned the video, which went viral over the weekend, pulling over 670,000 views and nearly 7,000 comments.
Officials with the Caledonia Police Department responded to the video on Facebook and announced an investigation was underway and that the allegations were being taken “very seriously.”
“Earlier today, the Caledonia Police Department was made aware of a cell phone video that is circulating social media platforms depicting the actions of a Caledonia police officer,” Caledonia Police Chief Christopher Botsch wrote. “We were able to locate the call for service associated with the cell phone video. The Caledonia Police Department is conducting a comprehensive internal review of the incident.”
Botsch said that dash cam and body camera video will also be reviewed as part of the investigation. The department released two clips of body cam footage and denied the cop was planting drugs or other evidence.
"Since there were NO DRUGS in the [plastic bag], the officers discarded the empty packaging material in the vehicle. This is what was observed in the video," the department posted Sunday (July 25). They added that no arrests were made during the traffic stop, only a speeding citation.
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