Manchester Police Destroy Key Evidence in Chalking 8 Case

by Garret Ean
Oct 3 2011

I recently received a letter in the mail from Manchester district court. It was prosecutor Gregory Muller’s response to my motion to compel evidence. I was hoping my motion to compel discovery evidence would have been sorted out at my initial hearing, but it was not ruled upon at that time. The response I’ve just received is written in the typical legal jargon you would expect of a court motion, and I’ve posted the relevant portion below.

That the based upon the defendant’s motion to compel discovery requests ‘any and all footage taken by cameras affixed to the police station at 351 Chestnut St. Manchester, NH’.

That the State has inquired about said evidence and has been informed that it does not exist. Upon information and belief, the external cameras fixed to the exterior of the Manchester police department continuously record to a hard drive. That upon reaching its capacity, said hard drive will automatically begin recording over previously stored video. That any particular moment captured by the external cameras will be preserved on the hard drive for approximately forty-eight hours until it is automatically recorded over and permanently lost.

Thus, the state does not possess the requested evidence and cannot be compelled to produce said evidence.

See a .pdf version of the motion here.

I ponder whether such a major evidence blunder was deliberate in order to prevent the exoneration of any of those arrested, or if those responsible for handling the investigation with MPD truly are so incompetent as to lose the most critical evidence in the case. On the same day that they stole at least nine cameras from private citizens under the guise of ‘collecting evidence’, Manchester PD failed to save any of the numerous angles being recorded by their very own cameras. In fact, Manchester police officers even claimed that they would be preserving the video evidence as they took cameras from private individuals.

Who will be held responsible?

During the trial of Kate Ager, John Patti claimed that Timothy Craig of Manchester PD was responsible for handling digital evidence. John Patti and Timothy Craig also happen to be the only two witnesses that Mr. Muller has called against me, so in this case I’ll have the opportunity in court to quite literally question authority.

In the interest of transparency, here’s the two charging papers created by the state and directed at “Ean Garrot”.

https://freeconcord.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mpd_02a.jpg
https://freeconcord.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mpd_03a.jpg

A view of the cameras on Manchester police department. Apparently, big brother was asleep for over two days.

The pretrial hearing on my Chalking 8 charges (two counts of disorderly) will be October 25 at 1:15. Trial date is set for Friday, November 18 at 1:00pm.