Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
April 15, 2005

During last year's Republican National Convention, the city of New York witnessed some of the largest mass arrests in the city's history. 1800 people were arrested.

But now the cases against the vast majority of the arrested have fallen apart. Of the nearly 1700 cases that have run their full course, 91 percent ended with charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that in some 400 cases charges were dropped because video recordings emerged showing that the arrested had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved.

In at least one case video evidence was doctored. During court proceedings, the police presented a video of the arrest of a man named Alexander Dunlop. It turned out that the video presented by the police was edited in two spots - images that showed Dunlop acting peacefully were removed.

Full article here.

By JIM DWYER
NY Times
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. RELATED: Video: RNC Protestors Harassed by Police State Goons

"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.

Full article here.

Text and Link by ogrish.com
May 28, 2006

"When Tennessee law enforcement officials showed up at the home of Lester Siler, who they suspected of drug use, they asked Lester's wife and son to leave. They didn't know that Lester's wife had turned on a tape recorder in the kitchen.

"When Lester exercised his constitutional right not to sign a consent to search his house, these officers spent the next two hours torturing him. They beat him with bats and guns, held loaded guns to his head, threatened to shoot him, dunked his head in the toilet, burned him with lighters, attached his testicles to a battery charger, threatened to cut off his fingers, and threatened to "go get" his wife and take his child away from him. Then they arrested him for "evading arrest"."

"Here nearly 40 minutes of the tape recording HERE."