The NYTimes has an article today about the use of civilian videos in getting charges dismissed for 400 of the people charged during protests during the Republican Convention:
Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
By JIM DWYER
Published: April 12, 2005
Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.
“We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed,” the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. “I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own.”
Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.
During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.
Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop’s lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.
You can read the rest here. The article also points out cases where video proved activists guilty. What it does not mention is that thousands of people picked up during the RNC were held for up to several days in a moldy disused bus terminal on Pier 57. Most people who were arrested that week have had their charges dropped or cases dismissed. A full 400 of them were let off because of video footage.
The prevalance of surveillance cameras all around us (in buildings, on streets) is a controversial one, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with cameras looking down on us from every building. However, this article reminded me of the power which can be given back to innocent people by the presence of someone else purposefully recording what’s happening. Someone who beats up a cop should be arrested. But someone who was just out to buy some sushi, or who was following police directives and undertaking a peaceful protest, should not.
Prosecutors said “a technician had cut the material by mistake.” Yeah right.
Cheap cameras have the potential to level the playing field a bit. Vive la techno-revolution!
1 comment so far ↓
yeah one of my friends from WBAI was arrested and broadcast most of it through his cell phone that they didnt find on him. It was, as usual, a pathetic day in the history of law, order, and that funny concept they call freedom.
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