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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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NYT on video and the RNC arrests |
Current rating: 0 |
by nytimes via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
11 Apr 2005
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"In the bulk of the 400 cases that were dismissed based on videotapes, most involved arrests at three places - 16th Street near Union Square, 17th Street near Union Square and on Fulton Street - where police officers and civilians taped the gatherings, said Martin R. Stolar, the president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Those tapes showed that the demonstrators had followed the instructions of senior officers to walk down those streets, only to have another official order their arrests." |
April 12, 2005
Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
By JIM DWYER
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." [...]
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.
@%< |
See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Purgery = jail time... right? |
by Sascha Meinrath
sascha (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
12 Apr 2005
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Several of my friends were among those arrested while following police orders. Now we have direct proof the police officers were lying under oath. So are those officers who are committing purgery going to be brought up on charges? It's one thing for police officials to issue contradictory orders; it's quite another to arrest people and throw them in jail when they attempted to follow these orders; but it's entirely unacceptable that police officers be allowed to get away with lying in a court a law. Those who do should be prosecuted the same as any other citizen would be. Because, in a democracy, no one is above the law. |
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Democracy Now! Headline on NYPD/RNC Evidence |
by From DN! via Paul Kotheimer
herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
12 Apr 2005
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NYPD Caught Editing RNC Arrest Video Evidence
This update on the mass arrests made at last year's Republican National Convention. According to the New York Times, charges have been dropped for over 400 people because video recordings emerged showing thatr the arrested had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved. In one case it appears the New York Police Department tampered with video evidence. In court the police presented a video of the arrest of a man named Alexander Dunlop who claimed he was wrongly arrested. It turned out that the video presented by the police was edited in two spots - images that showed Dunlop acting peacefully were removed. The court was not told the video was edited. This became known only after a member of the group I-Witness Video found another tape capturing Dunlop's arrest. Once the second tape was presented to the court, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges. The city now claims that a technician had cut the material out of the video by mistake. Of the nearly 1,700 cases involving convention arrests that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial.
Source: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/12/1344206 |
