MIAMI (AP) - Police video of Justin Bieber giving a urine sample for a drug test after his arrest on driving under the influence and other charges was released by prosecutors Thursday, with sensitive portions blacked out as ordered by a judge.
The clips released Thursday show the 20-year-old singer standing behind a low partition to provide the sample. A black box is imposed over his lower half to conceal any glimpse of his genitalia. The clips show Bieber being handed a cup by a police officer and later handing it back.
The video is part of nine disks of Miami Beach Police Department video sought Florida under public records laws by The Associated Press and other news organizations. Miami-Dade County Judge William Altfield agreed earlier this week with Bieber’s attorneys that some segments should be redacted to protect his privacy.
Altfield said that even in jail, Bieber’s “expectation of privacy should stay with him.”
The drug test is key to Bieber’s driving under the influence case because it found evidence of marijuana and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his system. Bieber also was charged Jan. 23 with resisting arrest and having an expired license. He has pleaded not guilty, and another status hearing is set for next week.
A breath test detected some evidence of alcohol after Bieber’s arrest, but it was below the 0.02 threshold in Florida for underage drivers. Bieber and R&B singer Khalil Amir Sharieff -driving a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, respectively - were pulled over for what police called an illegal street drag race, although they were not charged with drag racing.
Court records also show Bieber was scheduled Thursday to give a deposition in Miami in an unrelated lawsuit filed by a photographer who says he was roughed up by the singer’s bodyguards on a public sidewalk outside the Hit Factory recording studio last June.
Photographer Jeffrey Binion is seeking unspecified damages after one of Bieber’s bodyguards allegedly threw him against a wall, choked him and threatened him with a gun. Binion also says the bodyguards “forcibly removed the memory card from his camera.” The lawsuit says the bodyguards were acting on Bieber’s instructions.
There were no criminal charges brought in that case.
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