The video clip that appears to show a Utica road cop planting drugs during a traffic stop last February doesn't tell the whole story, Utica police Chief Mark Williams insists. Although the officer is seen removing a bag of white powder from his pocket before reaching into the vehicle with the same bag half a minute later, Williams claims the full video shows that the officer, Paul Paladino, had earlier found the drug's in the suspect's pocket. He then temporarily placed it in his own pocket as he continued to search the perps and the vehicle, Williams says.

"You can put the evidence on your person to maintain custody of it until you have a chance to store it," Williams says. "Where else are you going to put it, on the ground? In the course of searching someone, sometimes the only thing you’ve got is your pockets until a short time later you can put it all together... He's going into the car with it and that's what he's doing, it's cold out and he's basically separating the drugs from both defendants." You can see the full video here.

But the publisher of the Utica Phoenix, which first posted the video, isn't convinced. "Did they follow procedures?" asks Cassandra Harris-Lockwood. "If you take something from a suspect, do you put in back in your own pocket? You've got a crime scene, don't you protect your crime scene? What do you mean, you stick it in your pocket? That doesn't sound like proper police procedure to me. Stick it in your pocket? I don't think so."

And Venice Ervin with the NAACP isn't persuaded either: "We do feel there is concern that some wrongdoing has been done because police officers don’t place evidence in their back pocket and then take it out and climb into a suspect’s car, and then exit with the drugs unrolled." Police say they found 10 bags of marijuana on the handcuffed suspect seen in the video, identified as Grady Jones, 51. His passenger, Ameya Hunt, 38, also had marijuana in her purse, and police say they found bags with cocaine residue under the seat.

Jones pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor marijuana possession and Hunt pleaded to a marijuana violation, the Utica Observer-Dispatch reports. But one of them forwarded a copy of the video to the NAACP, because—according to Chief Williams—the cocaine allegations "prompted the defendants to question whether evidence had been planted." The Utica police department has cleared Officer Paladino of any wrongdoing, but the FBI has asked to review their findings.