Update: Nevada Court to Rule on Evidence Tampering in Arrest for Obstruction of Police Revenue Generation

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On December 5th, a judge in Boulder City, Nevada (located just outside of Las Vegas) will issue a ruling on a case involving a revenue-based enforcement exercise by local police, as well as allegations of a false arrest, perjury by a police supervisor, and the manufacturing of evidence that stem from an impromptu protest that day. Based on those improprieties, Judge Victor Miller has been asked to dismiss charges brought against John Hunt in a motion filed by Hunt’s attorney Stephen Stubbs.

In June of 2016, officers with the Boulder City Police Department were out early in the morning generating revenue for the city. Their scheme consisted of stepping into a crosswalk and then ticketing drivers who didn’t stop quick enough. One of the Boulder City residents that drove by that day was John Hunt, who has stated that he believes the police were intentionally stepping into traffic at a point where the cars did not have enough time to react and therefore would end up being ticketed and fined.

Hunt decided to protest what he deemed to be an unfair issuing of citations by going out and repeatedly walking into the cross walk himself. The intent was to show that the cars would stop if they were given the proper amount of time and thereby expose the true nature of Sgt. John Glenn and his cohorts. The Boulder City police have a bureaucracy to feed though, so obviously they weren’t happy about Hunt getting in the way of their morning fundraiser.

As I previously wrote here at NVCopBlock.org, Hunt was arrested and charged with “Failing to Yield as a Pedestrian” and “Resisting Arrest.” However, at his first hearing the charges were dismissed by the prosecutor even before it began. According to Stubbs, the reason for that quick dismissal was that Sgt. Glenn had lied on his police report in order to justify the arrest. Those lies (also known as perjury when included on a sworn police report) would have been exposed in court due to Hunt’s actions having been captured on a nearby business’ security cameras.

Not only did the surveillance video contradict Sgt. Glenn’s written arrest report, discrepancies soon surfaced involving the dash cam evidence that had been provided as part of the discovery process. As detailed in a follow up post I wrote here at Nevada Cop Block in October of 2016, Hunt questioned the authenticity of the audio included on the video that had been produced by the city. Subsequently, two different forensic audio experts testified that the audio had indeed been altered from that of the original video. (A PDF containing the full Forensic Audio Authentication Report can be found here.)

Citing the false testimony within the police report and the evidence tampering involving the dash cam footage, Stubbs filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in May of this year on Hunt’s behalf. In retaliation for that lawsuit, the Boulder City prosecutor refiled the original charges, plus an additional charge of “Obstructing an Officer,” the next month. In fact, rather than even try to mask the true nature behind refiling the charges, they were actually submitted by the city just one day after the lawsuit was reported by local news.

“I’m in awe of how stupid this is,” said defense lawyer Stephen Stubbs. “It screams of retaliation.”

Included in the motion to dismiss are several new details regarding the inconsistencies on the dash cam video’s audio track and some less than convincing excuses for them by Sgt. Glenn and city attorney’s office and police department of Boulder City:

The alleged false evidence mentioned in Tuesday’s motion to dismiss includes dash-cam video of the June 8 incident that Glenn said did not match what he had seen in the system from that day.

It was given to the defense by the city on July 5 and is different than the dash-cam footage that Stubbs received in 2016.

Two forensic experts who analyzed the 2016 dash-cam video determined that the recording had been altered.

“Two separate audio forensic experts have confirmed that the video contains the wrong unit number … proving that, at a minimum the metadata was altered …. The defense does not know how much of the video was altered or if an authentic video even exists anymore,” Stubbs wrote in his motion.”

That newer dash cam video and questions surrounding the erroneous unit number, as well as what appears to be an alteration of the text overlay on the video after the fact to replace the incorrect unit number has cast even more doubt on the authenticity of the video evidence the city has provided.

During a deposition for the lawsuit on November 20th, Glenn testified about those questions:

In that deposition, Hunt’s other attorney, David T. Blake, showed Glenn the earlier dash-cam video of the event. The video, (from) June 8, 2016, said that it was from Unit 277. The text of those items was in red print.

“As far as I know, our text is not in red,” he told Blake when asked if he’d seen that type of text overlay before. “It’s in white … It looks similar to the format that we use, but I don’t recall ever seeing any in red.”

Blake also asked him about the unit number.

In the deposition, Glenn said that his unit number the day of the activity on June 8 was 277. He also said that he had been assigned to that unit number since the vehicle was brand-new, approximately two and a half years.

Later in the deposition and in an email provided to the defense, Glenn said that although his unit number was 277, the camera in his vehicle was actually from unit 281.

“My vehicle number is 277 …. And the camera in unit 277 failed,” he said in the deposition. “It had to be sent back. There was another vehicle that wasn’t being used, which was unit 281. The camera out of that vehicle was taken out of that vehicle, placed in my vehicle and the device name was not changed when it was changed over. So my vehicle was being broadcast as 281.”

In the email Glenn added that the unit identifier was “mistakenly not changed” until around Aug. 4, 2016.

So, between the original retaliatory nature of the charges (without even getting into the exploitative financial motive for the “safety exercise” Hunt had interrupted), the inconsistencies in Sgt. Glenn’s police reports, and the evidentiary issues, logic should dictate that Judge Miller will have an easy decision to do the right thing and grant the motion for dismissal.

Stephen Stubbs certainly seems to think so:

“By manufacturing false and fraudulent evidence, the city attorney’s office, the Boulder City Police Department, or both have tipped the scales of justice so far that the scales themselves have fallen into a bog of eternal stench,” said Stubbs about Tuesday’s motion…

“We filed this because the evidence is clear that the city attorney’s office, the Boulder City Police Department or both manufactured false evidence and gave it to defense as discovery,” Stubbs said. “They cheated …. Justice requires all these ridiculous charges be dropped.”

However, we are dealing with the government and their police enforcers, so logic might not be the standard by which things are decided. Nor is there any lack of precedence for cops to get away with or even be rewarded for committing blatant acts of perjury and evidence tampering. That’s especially the case in Las Vegas area police departments.