We Have a *Huge* Problem Here

The New York City police department lies, routinely, under oath. We need to fix this. We need to fix this badly:

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....

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....

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....

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....

Comments

[matt]

As a retired NYPD captain, I am not at all surprised by this piece. In situations like large scale unrest, the arresting officer is usually a cop who is assigned to process the arrrest in court. S/he probably didn't witness the actions that led to the arrest and s/he should be saying at the time that the complaint is drawn up that "S/he is informed by police officer so and so shield number______" that s/he observed the defendant do the following things which constitute the following offenses."

I always tried to impress upon the people who worked for me that assigning arrests to officers other than those who actually witnessed the acts was poor practice. It tempts the officers who are so assigned to embellish what they think occurred and then it leads to perjury like the one indicated in the Times article. And this is probably routine.

So, yes, perjury by police officers in New York City is probably pervasive and many of the officers don't know how to not do it. It is the responsibility of their bosses to ensure that they are not forced to lie under oath and many of the bosses don't realize this is their job. The biggest responsibility of any boss is to train the people who work for them.

Many of the cops don't understand that it is perfectly legit to say that they didn't actually witness the event, but they aren't taught this. They think they have to tell what to many of them is a little white lie. Then when they have to testify under oath to what they told the district attorney, the lie becomes a crime. And from this they learn to weave stories out of nothing and they start down a slippery slope from which there is no return.

I'm not saying this to condone the behavior but to show how easily it occurs the first time. The problem is one of poor training.

[Cal]

Cops lie all the time. Cops everywhere lie all the time. Why are you surprised by this? NYPD had cops lie about sodomizing a man with a broom handle. What's a lie about causing a ruckus compared with that? Remember the line from the Dallas DA from the movie "Thin Blue Line"? Any fool can convict a guilty man, it takes skill to convict an innocent man. No doubt they have dangerous jobs, should be higher paid and there should be more of them and less laws to enforce. But modern cities won't pay to do that. So we end up with liars who cut corners based on hunches and experience; the problem is that they won't acknowledge that their hunches are also based on bias, prejudice and political pressures.

[Colin Danby]

I doubt that the NYPD is the only police force in which lying under oath -- that is, manufacturing incriminating evidence -- is institutionalized. These particular cases got attention because people are lucky enough to have film, and because the NYT is inclined to sympathize with prosperous Manhattanites who go out for sushi. If NYT reporters ventured into the outer boroughs, or even North of 125th street, they could probably report this story more often.

[paulo]

From my experience, police doing protest duty are coached in the attitude that protestors are necessarily bad and dangerous while the institutions being 'protected' from protestors are necessarily good. In San Francisco the government has for a couple decades tacitly recognized the right -- and perhaps goodness -- of protestors to do their thing. In NYC and DC, and under the current Bush govt, police are guided to view protestors as dangerous people breaking the laws before they even hit the streets. (DC recently paid nearly a half million to seven 'protestors' whose arrest wasn't warranted.)
One needs to blame the national and city leadership for creting this atmosphere. If police aren't trained to think that demonstrators are a big problem of our society, perhaps they won't spend so much effort trying to repress them and go through this problem of false arrests. And so they might really focus on the demonstrators that break the law.

[Randolph Fritz]

Brad, you seem surprised by this. Are you? And if so, why?

[Charlie]

In the public defender/DA community, police don't "testify," they "testi-lie." It's a lame pun, but it gets at the truth. You wouldn't believe how many defendants are convicted based solely on a police officer's testimony that a bag of drugs "dropped from the defendant's pocket" onto the sidewalk in front of the cop. It's incredible to me that juries ever believed this sort of thing. These days, fewer and fewer of them do.

[big al]

"Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying video camera."

[PaulB]

My problem is this quote: "the public should not rush to criticize officers simply because their recollections of events are not consistent with a single videotape."

That is such a horrendous, not to mention disingenuous, twisting of the facts in this case, that it deserves a mention of its own.

The police officer in the example cited didn't just have an "inconsistent recollection;" it's clear that he deliberately and blatantly lied.

The real test will be what happens next. An officer of the law has deliberately lied under oath on the witness stand; a police lab has deliberately tampered with evidence. If those acts are allowed to stand, heaven help us.

[piotr]

PaulB: these acts will be allowed to stand. I hope that we can survive without help from above.

Good news: NYC prosecutors were rather prompt in dropping tampered cases. Mediocre news: this was the plan from the very beginning, use arrests not for "law enforcement" but for low-level (but effective) harrasment.

Bad news: cops knew that they are required to midlead and harrass, and they cheerfully executed the orders. A prosecutor who would like to make a case against testilier would not be a prosecutor for long. As a society, we have chosen to use lawless methods of law enforcement. Nothing will change until a DA will loose a re-election over things like that.

[Carlos]

A quote from a defense lawyer turned writer "¿who are the best liars under oath? Cops, because they aren't nervous at all. Most people is nervous on the stand, but cops testify under oath all the time and are used to it, so they can lie and be completely calm and relaxed."

[Rob Sperry]

Seems like a good argument for more people to carry video cameras.

[wkwillis]

I am a security guard. I track trends in security. Camera chips get cheaper every day. So does fiber bandwidth.

1. As a test question for the students, on what date does security get outsourced from Mexicans in America to Mexicans in Mexico?

2. As a test question for the students, on what date are there no longer 'bluelined' neighborhoods, neighborhoods where police protection has been withdrawn, because the camera chips have been wifi networked and the 'hood grannies will follow you down the street as they hop from front porch camera to front porch camera and watch you commit crimes in real time provide videotapes to the cops?

[bernard1]

Commenting from outside the USA, the most surprising piece in this article was that there was no mention whatsoever of anyone seeking damages or whatever from the NYPD. Whatever happened to the USA, so often portrayed as the heavenly land of lawyers and litigators ?

[matt]

bernardt:

the dismissal of the charges is prelude to going into court to seek restitution. It's likely that the NYC corporation counsel's office has already made settlements with numerous complainants or at least there is a plan to settle with them.

the arrests during that convention were all egregious acts and I doubt they city believed any of the charges would stand.

The comment that cities won't pay salaries that attract better applicants is right on the money and the results of that are evident in the continuing decrease in standards of recruits for the NYPD, aside from those who are following family traditions. It is not unlikely to have people who have been arrested for felonies, but not convicted, accepted for employment with the NYPD. People with misdemeanor arrests are routinely passed as acceptable applicants.

Cops are leaving the NYPD in droves, and not just street level cops. The job is basically losing its institutional memory, and people who could school newer officers in what is acceptable behavior and how people should be treated, no matter what the circumstances, are opting for other careers.

[Ian Welsh]

So, what about all the people who weren't lucky enough to have their arrests videotaped?

[matt]

I think a good defense attorney would obtain through discovery the names of the people whose charges had been dropped and would call them as witnesses to say that the behavior of the poplice and the city in general had been an effort to stifle dissent and that the arrests weren't warranted.

My question is this: Since the arrests were made at the obvious behest of the GOP to keep demonstrators away from the Garden, what portion of the settlements will be paid by the Feds? My guess-none of it. This will become just another thing that a municipality will have to pay for that the federal govt engendered.

The Bush administration still has not alloted all of the promised money to NYC that was promised after 911. But who really expects this criminal administration to keep its promises to mere cities and peons? We are not, after all, in the elite group that gets listened to around here.

[Kristjan Wager]

From descriptions of the arrests in NYC that I've read, a lot of people signed papers saying that they would not sue the police/city for being arrested in order to get released.

Such a description can be found at http://www.scripsit.com/journal/A31.html (or http://www.scripsit.com/journal/A31.rtf in .rtf format).

[APav]

The sad part is what happens in the minds of jurors. The prosecution attempts to present a "believable" scenario and most jurors skip over "likely" into "beyond reasonable doubt" with surprising ease. I've been witness and subject to that same "mind think" and it is the rare juror with the personal confidence to resist. People need to suspect that anytime the prosecution has gaps in the evidence, it is deliberate. After all, they are professionals at this and if they selectively record/show video or voice it is reasonable to assume the ommissions are exculpetory (sp?). Not to say that the police don't have a lot to deal with in trying to establish public safety but they don't seem to hesitate in trampling on people in the process.

[Airsoft Guns]

their's so many circumstances in life... no one is perfect...
even the higher ups.... jurors like them are ine of those people who are not that serious with the welfare of others!!!