Tapes Show RNC Protestors Were Falsely Arrested
by TChris
Last September, TalkLeft reported the arrest of 1,000 protesters at the Republican National Convention in New York City. It turned out that 1,806 people were arrested during the Convention, including a guy who was busted while he was on his way to pick up sushi.
The first arrestee to take his case to trial, Dennis Kyne, was charged with inciting a riot and resisting arrest. The arresting officer testified that Kyne had to be carried away "because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own." The officer didn't know, however, that the arrest was captured on a video recording that would expose his perjury.
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.
The charges were abruptly dismissed. And what about the poor guy who just wanted to get his 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.
How convenient that this "mistake" happened to benefit the prosecution. The deleted portions of the tape contradicted police claims that Dunlop pushed his bicycle into a line of police officers.
If it wasn't obvious at the time, it should now be clear that most protestors at the RNC weren't arrested for breaking the law; they were arrested for protesting. "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."
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.
Arresting protestors might have benefited the Republican Party, but the arrests came at an enormous cost to the public, to the individual arrestees, and to the First Amendment. The New York City police should be ashamed to have played this game.
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