Commonwealth v. B.A.

Police observed B.A. driving his car in West Philly in an area the police described as a corridor to the Philadelphia drug trade from the main line. Officers stopped his car after they claim he performed a “park up”, where a driver pulls over to avoid being followed by police. The reason for the stop according to the officers was that his car had heavily tinted windows. The officers claimed that B.A. was acting extremely nervously, repeating himself, and that he said he was delivering pizza, though there were no delivery bags in the car. For these reasons, the officers pulled B.A. out of the car and frisked him. During the frisk one of the officers discovered heroin and several hypodermic needles. Therefore, they arrested B.A. for drug possession charges in the state of Philadelpha. The defense filed a motion to suppress evidence. Unbeknownst to the officers, B.A. secretly recorded the entire traffic stop on his camera phone! After locking the officer into his testimony, the cop was confronted with the video on cross examination, which clearly demonstrated that the officer committed perjury due to the fact that almost none of what the officer claimed happened actually did occur. In fact, the video showed one of the officers recovering a pocketknife out of the glove box. This fact was never mentioned in the police reports, not was it testified to. The knife was not returned to B.A. Thoughts on where that knife might be now????? Needless to say, a judge found the officer NOT credible and granted the defense motion to suppress evidence.