I am not defending this or any other cop. I don't put this or worse past them. But from what I see in this video specifically, it doesn't really indicate to me that he planted it. The bag is already being discussed before the scene comes into view. The suspect is not denying that there is a bag. He says, "there is no crack in that bag, I'm not a crack head". This is not something you'd say if someone whipped out a bag to plant. You'd say it's not yours. The camerawoman pans to the officer and he is (stupidly) fumbling with the bag and passing it from hand to hand. At one point he tries to pass it to an officer behind him who apparently has his hands full. He puts it on the ground. We never see him actually take anything from his pocket. From the dialogue it is believable that the bag is the suspects property (just he denies it there is crack in it). From the article, we see that the police claim it was methamphetamine pills.

None of this is in defense of these people. Even if it were crack or heroin or meth it does not justify fucking sitting on someone and ruining their life with a bullshit charge. These people are violent and the way the guy runs towards the lady recording makes it extremely believable that he was indeed planting something.

The reason I bring this up is because we shouldn't jump to conclusions. In the past few days I've been outraged and horrified by many clear instances of abuse of power and violence by police but also by a bunch of videos which appear to show cops destroying their own cars to justify violence to protestors, distributing bricks, other acts of violence etc. To find out when I scroll down that there were innocent explanations. Piles of bricks supposedly distributed in areas where protests are happening, actually were there for months for construction. Car windows being bashed by police to move them out of the way. Police beatings, from years ago not from the protests. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be lied to and fooled. Anyone who is trying to intentionally mislead us has an untrustworthy agenda as well. We should not throw critical thinking to the wind because of all the crazy things the police are doing. If there really are good apples out there somewhere, you can be sure they'll leave the force after they are accused of inciting violence.