RIVERSIDE POLICE EVIDENCE TAMPERING

[barbarakrack]

EVIDENCTAMPERING E
Digital Photos in Discovery Package ALTERED!
I am currently a defendant in a H&S case out of Riverside Ca. In a discovery package, provided after a crucial suppression hearing, I found pictures that had been digitally altered. These alterations are visible to the naked eye. When enhanced you can see that the pixels around the time stamp are larger. My digital tech who produces dvds for the consumer market, tells me that since it is a copy of a picture printed on photo paper that he can only speculate on what was done since he had no access to the disk with the original data. However he assures me that, altered they were. His belief is that the time stamp was a cut and paste picked up off of something else and placed on these pics, when placed there, they were found to be out of scale and enlarged, hence the larger pixels. Now the funny thing is, that the time stamp only has the day of the month and the time, no year, no month. Has anyone ever seen anything like that? Now the thing is my attorney as well as my codefendant's attorney find nothing significantly amiss about this. NOBODY CARES THAT SOMEBODY IS GUILTY OF TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE! I am requesting that anyone with similar experience contact me with any potentially helpful info. Also I am seeking anyone who has had problems with perjury, search and seizure issues, or other police misconduct committed by the ARCNET task force, and in particular officer CHARLES SCIORTINO. Please contact me at [e-mail]. WE MUST JOIN TOGETHER AND STOP THESE SYSTEMIC VIOLATIONS OF OUR RIGHTS!

[WaTcHeR]

Seem's we're getting a few people on the board with the same problem of police altering video.

Altering evidence is a felony!

Just curious, do you have a court appointed attorney? If you do don't expect him to push the matter too much and piss off his buddies the prosecutor and judge.

I would check and see how the video is "handled" as evidence. Who all touch's it, who views it? Surely the video could be tainted at some point. One article below has some interesting thoughts.

Doing a quick Google search, there's really not alot on altering/tampering video. Then again it's still fairly new, since alot of police departments still have the old analog and not digital in there cars.

Here's a few interesting things I found:



Catch-22: courts protect police that alter tape evidence
Judge Creed of the Santa Clara County Superior Court, had come up through the ranks as a police officer apparently knowing what police officers sometimes "have" to do. He had a standing order in the courts, that all requests for originals of tape evidence had to go through him. And before he would allow their release, he in effect required proof that there were alterations. He had in effect, established a "Catch-22".

The most convincing physical proof of tape editing is the start and stop marks left on the tape by the record head during editing. Making a copy of the edited tape, however, removes much of this proof. Many times the only proof left after copying is that you might still be able to prove that a tape, that is supposed to be an original, is actually a copy. But since you only had a known copy to analyze, that information would be useless.

All the Tape Forensic Experts -- whose testimony is accepted in courts --, refuse to testify about anything but un-refutable evidence (perhaps to keep their status as court qualified experts). The best I could get out of one forensic expert was a double negative: "The sound on the tape is not inconsistent with editing" (but there might be some other way it could have been produced). Useless in a court of law.

All that would be required of someone that is altering tape evidence, is to know a little about what the forensic expert looks for when analyzing tapes, plus assurance that the "originals" won't be analyzed, and there is little chance of being caught at it.


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Examples of Edits in tape evidence:
police make both good and sloppy edits.
The following snippet of tape recording was taken from the evidence tape supposedly of March 7, 1990. I believe this is where "Barbara" solicited sex with the ten year old boy, from me and where I adamantly refused. On the next phone call, she soft peddled her solicitation ("sometime in the future, if the boy ever shows an interest, etc.") to which I gave a more favorable response ("I wouldn't rule it out."). That response was placed after the original question. Because of the poor quality of this edit, it may have been done by Officer Brenda (Wells) Herbert herself without the knowledge of her team/department that was doing more professional edits.

Apparently the actual edit click, was covered up with a huge glitch (fingernail on microphone?). The entire edited tape was also probably later cleaned up professionally (ie, filtered) when they figured out that I was going to get a copy. A forensic tape expert examining my copy claimed it was "acoustic" and not proof of an edit.

From: www.jwebster.com/altered.htm#catch22


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SECURITY
The video needs to be preserved as any other evidence would be. The chain of evidence should be provable from the instant video is recorded until the moment it is viewed. . There will undoubtedly be some effort to prove the possibility of tampering with digital video due to the proliferation of computers and easily obtainable software designed for this purpose. In actuality, this would be a very tedious project to change hundreds or thousands of pixels on hundreds, if not thousands of individual video frames. Nonetheless, efforts should be taken to protect the video evidence. A proper system architecture and departmental policy and procedure can accomplish this for the video files. Physical security of the hard drive, both in the car and its trip to the station (in the case of a removable drive system) will protect the video files to the point they are electronically “logged” into evidence, much as a video tape was. Proper system architecture can eliminate any security breaches via the Ethernet connection in the car. In addition, the in-car system should generate a checksum (or other provable means to detect file tampering) for each video file as it is recorded. The server should be able to verify this checksum when the file is stored and viewed. Watermarking the video will not provide “file” security – the watermark proves that a particular frame came from the in-car system, but cannot prove that frames have not been added, deleted, or modified. Wireless file transmission will also require additional security means. Encrypting the entire video file can provide an enhanced level of security but may not be needed with proper system architecture. More complex security schemes mean that video files are higher processed, increase in size, and take longer to upload, store, and retrieve. The goal here to simply be able to prove that no one had access or the opportunity to tamper with any of the files on the hard drive or on the department server at any time. Once the file is transferred to the server you have the same goal. The “original” video (file) was transferred to the server and should be treated as evidence at that point. Restricted access to the server itself and very restricted, or read-only LAN access to the files can accomplish this exactly like a video tape stored your evidence area. File copies should be made on non-rewritable media with identifying tags noting media originality, time and date of creation.


From: www.policeone.com/police-products/vehicle-equipment/in-car-video/articles/83205/

[hunterlab]

How about 911 tapes being altered to proect a superior officer that turned deputies around back to the station after being dispatched for a domestic violence call at his residence. How about being taped after requesting confidentiality and then having the tape used as evidence against you,and last but not least having your pistol permit info deleted from the database for no reason. I have never commited a crime in my life whatsoever, except try to expose some officers on the take which apparently is a crime in this country.