KOB4 ran a story highlighting sworn statements by APD’s former records custodian manager Reynaldo Chavez. During a newly released deposition, Mr. Chavez disclosed that it is possible to alter APD lapel camera footage through the creation of an “orphan” video clip which is later substituted for and made to look like the original “parent” clip. These alterations can include inserting objects, such as a gun into lapel footage.
According to Mr. Chavez:
Here’s a number of ways to do it. So you upload a video clip to evidence.com. That becomes the parent. At that time, you go in and do whatever operation you want on that original. You … then it becomes the orphan. It becomes the orphan, so at the end of the operation, you still have the original, which hasn’t been altered, and now you have the new orphan, which you’ve added, deleted, redacted, whatever operation you’ve done. So you store that file. You can go in and close everything up, and the one that was the parent, actually go ahead and do the deletion, come back, make your orphan, upload as if it were a new piece of evidence that came in and that was uploaded to the cloud.
Mr. Chavez attests that APD responded to Inspection of Public Records Act (“IPRA”) requests from the media and attorneys with altered orphans instead of the original parent videos to avoid further embarrassment for the police department and to cover up police misconduct. Our firm asked APD to produce videos from the Mary Hawkes shooting via IPRA over 602 days ago. On Wednesday April 26, 2017, we filed a motion for Summary Judgment asking the court to sanction the City of Albuquerque for violating open record laws.
See KOB4’s full news story by clicking here.