Two police officers in Staten Island, New York, Kyle Erickson and Elmer Pastran were caught on two occasions of plating marijuana after stopping two cars for minor traffic infractions and "claiming" the vehicles smelled of weed. In Feb of 2018, the first incident involving Lasou Kuyateh and multiple other friends finds that Erickson switches his body camera off and then on to discover a marijuana cigarrete in a video published by NY Times later that year. In a another video filmed by Kuyateh himself, Erickson is holding a small plastic bag in which Kuyateh yells out, "Yo, you were just putting something in my car." The officers then demand he step back and he then yells again, "He's putting something in my car, yo! He's putting something in my car!" After two weeks in jail and making it out on bail, Kuyateh was dropped of all charged in the pre-trial hearing yet the two officers were not investigated for misconduct. At the second incident involving a friend and passenger Jason Serrano, the same two officers again stopped the car for a broken tail light and then claimed the car smelled like weed. Serrano was recently shot and suffered from a recovering abdominal wound which he pointed out and showed the officers. When they asked Serrano and the driver, they did, and went on to search Serrano's jacket despite his refusal. The officers became more aggressive and roughly pushed Serrano to the ground and handcuffed him knowing of his injury. “They said I was resisting arrest, but I just didn’t want to hit the floor, the only thing I was thinking about was this,” Serrano said during an interview, pointing to his stomach. “I still had staples in me. … I couldn’t even stand up straight.” Serrano is caught on video on the ground hurling in pain as ambulance is coming. They begin searching Serrano's car and jacket a Erickson tells Pastran "we've got to find something." Growing agitated, Erickson admits he hasn't found anything yet and fifteen seconds (on camera) he returns to the cupholder and settles a bud of marijuana down. Erickson searched through Serrano's jacket just out of the camera's view and minutes later claims to have found weed inside. The two turn to each other and fist bump and throughout the search spoke almost identical words just heard in the footage with Kuyateh. The petition will call for the accountability of these officers' misconduct, the repeal of 50-A (to a section of the New York Civil Rights Law that makes the personnel records of law enforcement officers “confidential and not subject to inspection or review") and have body cameras and dashcams on officers accessible to the public. Currently, between various states and jurisdictions, law enforcement chooses whether or not to release body camera footage and controls how much of it. Body cameras are of little use if the evidence they contain remains inaccessible.