Fascination article in the NY Times about how video has given a truer perspective on what happened during the Republican National Convention protests. The video has both shown that the police did not employ "explicitly violent" tactics as well as helping prosecutors get guilty pleas or convictions from some protesters. But there were some cases where video actually cleared some people, like this story about Alexander Dunlop who was swept up into the fray when picking 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.
Eek. You'd have to think some of the people who pleaded guilty are going to enlist the help of volunteer film archivists to find more tape evidence! And we're reminded of the guy who proved he wasn't part of a Critical Mass bike ride during the convention with his receipt from the 2nd Avenue Deli.
The NY Times has a graphic that shows the difference between cut and uncut footage from the convention. The feeling Gothamist got was even though we don't want a Big Brother society, nor do we want a reality television waking life all the time, there does seem to be some merit in being able to go to the video tape.
Photo above by Rion Nakaya for rion.nu
