Police Video Evidence
People who have been charged with DUI by Seattle police often try to challenge the legality of their arrests. To do this, they attempt to gather as much information about the incident as possible. One key piece of evidence which is frequently sought is the video footage of the arrest made by the camera mounted on the police vehicle’s dashboard. But in a few cases, defendants have been told that no such video footage exists – when in fact it does.
A Seattle man is trying to change all that.
Eric Rachner was trying to gather evidence to fight an obstruction of justice charge, and in doing so requested police dashcam videos of his arrest. He did receive one video of the incident, but were told that six others did not exist. After additional research, Rachner discovered and obtained additional video recordings of his arrest – and eventually won a $60,000 public-disclosure judgment against the police department. (The original charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence.)
Now, the 35-year old computer security company owner has created a website that gives the general public access to records pertaining to police dashcam videos for the last three years. The site, seattlepolicevideo.com, doesn’t link to the actual videos themselves; but it does allow users to view the official logs of the recordings to ascertain that certain video footage of a given incident does indeed exist. The video logs can be searched both by date and time of the incident as well as by officer badge number.
Rachner claims that Seattle police frequently tell people that specific dashcam videos don’t exist (or cannot be found because the database in not easily search-able, which is false). He hopes that his website will permit individuals to determine whether such a statement is true. If a person discovers a video in the database after being informed that it wasn’t there, it could affect the outcome of their criminal case – and even serve as the basis for a civil lawsuit against the police department.
So if you feel that you were unfairly arrested for driving under the influence or treated inappropriately during a DUI stop, this site could be a tool for you to acquire the evidence you need to argue your case.