What happened to the other article, and it's comments??

any one wonder why that riot cops are ALWAYS made up of mostly anglo-saxon males?

could that porker in the forefront be any fatter... May each and every last cop that takes part in these action while chanting "I'm just doing my job" die a miserable and painful death. May their Sons get their necks snapped while playing that team sport ameriKKKan footbal that aims to condition ameriKKKas male youth to patriotism

That first cop looks to be a woman with a bullet proof vest on, and the neck snap comment is cute, yet kinda like a sick prayer.

This isn't a rogue cop story, though I'm certain that there are plenty out there. This is flagrant flouting of the law by the DA office and the higher ups in NYPD. Ultimately the Mayor has to take responsibility. By not condemning this unlawful behavior he is promoting it, as evidenced by the mass arrests that continue every month at Critical Mass rides.

Well, don't get too excited with the Times, folks. I went to their website on the day that this article was on the front page, to check out the video footage, and this is what I got:
Video Not Found:
Sorry, but the video you requested is no longer available. We suggest you select another video from the videos on the right or by going to our Multimedia page and using the search feature.

Ha... oh well.

well, while the state continues to escalate its violence against its own people, the more we need to escalate our Revolutionary rights to overthrow it. If those who say such things are considered "terrorists" then I supposed "Jefferson" was a "terrorist" as well.

The New York Times
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."

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.

Seven months after the convention at Madison Square Garden, criminal charges have fallen against all but a handful of people arrested that week. Of the 1,670 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial. Many were dropped without any finding of wrongdoing, but also without any serious inquiry into the circumstances of the arrests, with the Manhattan district attorney's office agreeing that the cases should be "adjourned in contemplation of dismissal."

So far, 162 defendants have either pleaded guilty or were convicted after trial, and videotapes that bolstered the prosecution's case played a role in at least some of those cases, although prosecutors could not provide details.

Besides offering little support or actually undercutting the prosecution of most of the people arrested, the videotapes also highlight another substantial piece of the historical record: the Police Department's tactics in controlling the demonstrations, parades and rallies of hundreds of thousands of people were largely free of explicit violence.

Throughout the convention week and afterward, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the police issued clear warnings about blocking streets or sidewalks, and that officers moved to arrest only those who defied them. In the view of many activists - and of many people who maintain that they were passers-by and were swept into dragnets indiscriminately thrown over large groups - the police strategy appeared to be designed to sweep them off the streets on technical grounds as a show of force.

"The police develop a narrative, the defendant has a different story, and the question becomes, how do you resolve it?" said Eileen Clancy, a member of I-Witness Video, a project that assembled hundreds of videotapes shot during the convention by volunteers for use by defense lawyers.

Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, said that videotapes often do not show the full sequence of events, and that the public should not rush to criticize officers simply because their recollections of events are not consistent with a single videotape. The Manhattan district attorney's office is reviewing the testimony of Officer Wohl at the request of Lewis B. Oliver Jr., the lawyer who represented Mr. Kyne in his arrest at the library.

The Police Department maintains that much of the videotape that has surfaced since the convention captured what Mr. Browne called the department's professional handling of the protests and parades. "My guess is that people who saw the police restraint admired it," he said.

Video is a useful source of evidence, but not an easy one to manage, because of the difficulties in finding a fleeting image in hundreds of hours of tape. Moreover, many of the tapes lack index and time markings, so cuts in the tape are not immediately apparent.

That was a problem in the case of Mr. Dunlop, who learned that his tape had been altered only after Ms. Clancy found another version of the same tape. Mr. Dunlop had been accused of pushing his bicycle into a line of police officers on the Lower East Side and of resisting arrest, but the deleted parts of the tape show him calmly approaching the police line, and later submitting to arrest without apparent incident.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney, Barbara Thompson, said the material had been cut by a technician in the prosecutor's office. "It was our mistake," she said. "The assistant district attorney wanted to include that portion" because she initially believed that it supported the charges against Mr. Dunlop. Later, however, the arresting officer, who does not appear on the video, was no longer sure of the specifics in the complaint against Mr. Dunlop.

In what appeared to be the most violent incident at the convention protests, video shot by news reporters captured the beating of a man on a motorcycle - a police officer in plainclothes - and led to the arrest of one of those involved, Jamal Holiday. After eight months in jail, he pleaded guilty last month to attempted assault, a low-level felony that will be further reduced if he completes probation. His lawyer, Elsie Chandler of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, said that videos had led to his arrest, but also provided support for his claim that he did not realize the man on the motorcycle was a police officer, reducing the severity of the offense.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said that despite many civilians with cameras who were nearby when the officer was attacked, none of the material was turned over to police trying to identify the assailants. Footage from a freelance journalist led police to Mr. Holiday, he said.

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.

Ms. Thompson of the district attorney's office said, "We looked at videos from a variety of sources, and in a number of cases, we have moved to dismiss."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

just like evansville, you can't expect the cops to testify truthfully, or the judges to seek the truth. ( we have one judge who has two "legal" names ) indiana justice strikes again. home of the kkk

To the Editor:

Re "Videos Challenge Hundreds of Convention Arrests" (front page, April 12):

You report about shocking misconduct in connection with some of the 1,806 arrests made during the Republican National Convention last summer involving the alteration of police tapes.

Charges against hundreds of those arrested were dismissed when unaltered videotapes came to light, but the matter cannot be allowed to rest there.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg should appoint a task force to investigate the misconduct and to prepare a public report recommending reform of police procedures and calling those responsible for the abuses to account.

A police spokesman says officers should not be criticized if their recollection of events does not comport with a videotape.

If a person does not have an accurate recollection of events, he has no business testifying under oath in court in a criminal proceeding that may result in a citizen's loss of liberty.
Marilyn M. Jerry
Princeton, N.J., April 12, 2005

•


To the Editor:

What is truly disturbing about the prosecutions after last summer's Republican National Convention and the alteration of police tapes is that the matter is no longer about allegations of misconduct but about retribution against people who turned out to express opinions opposed to those of the Republicans.

This is the political nightmare we fear the most.
Joseph Keiffer
New York, April 12, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Police officers who offer false testimony about arrests, technicians who alter videos, and prosecutors who offer untrue evidence in court should be prosecuted.

But their misconduct pales in comparison with the systemic misconduct of the New York City government during the Republican convention last year.

The suppression of dissent has become commonplace, and it is an outrage. We need to ensure that freedom is more than a slogan.

Jacob Remes
Durham, N.C., April 12, 2005
•

To the Editor:

While we should be thankful that the technology exists for the common citizen now to more easily protect himself from the repressive tactics of the state (which we so readily allow to abrogate our rights under the guise of homeland security), what legal action can we expect Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to take against the police, who were so quick to deny the right of assembly?

Will we soon begin mass arrests of anyone with a video camera at any public gathering?

Or should we expect technology to allow the police to disable video cameras at their whim, again under the guise of homeland security?

Tony Alfrey
Woodside, Calif., April 12, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Dropping the charges against many of the protesters is but the first step in the more thorough moral reckoning that awaits us.

Your article underscores the yawning chasm between what we as a country are telling ourselves about our role as an ambassador of democracy and the chilling reality of America's role in the world: invading sovereign countries, deporting Muslims to be tortured abroad, and domestically, penning dissenting citizens.

(Rev.) Tom Martinez
Brooklyn, April 12, 2005
•

To the Editor:

For those of us who have for decades demonstrated peacefully in New York City for progressive causes, revelations of police hyperbole are nothing new.

For future demonstrations, I encourage The New York Times and other media to pick up a video camera and rely less on "he said, she said" reportage.
Daniel Katz
New York, April 12, 2005

this article is no great leap forward!

it is mired in the standard confusion that mainstream/corporate media doles out, for our middle-brow entertainment, while we get absorbed by ads, like from american apparel and what not ;)

for instance, all the sentences on how the cops were admirable in their restraint, etc. etc.

the real story is how independent reporters, and regulah people are making media that is making it somewhat hard for the cops to 'do their thing'.

hats off to radical media making!

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