New York City: RNC Protesters Framed Up

Cops, Lies and Videotape

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 847, 29 April 2005.

Last summer, the Republicans spent a week celebrating the prospect of another four years as the favored party of the bloody American ruling class. Outside on the streets, New York City cops were running rampant, sweeping up over 1,800 people who were there to protest, as well as others who were just trying to go about their business. Protesters were banned from rallying in virtually every public gathering place; they were rounded up, bound up in orange plastic webs throughout the city during the convention week. Hundreds were detained for days under filthy, hazardous conditions in makeshift cages at Pier 57.

After eight months, some of the arrestees finally had their day in court, and a few of the lies, dirty tricks and outright tearing up of constitutional rights that the state uses all the time to suppress dissent have come to light. Alexander Dunlop's case demonstrates to what lengths the police went to frame up people. Dunlop was arrested on his way to pick up some sushi during the RNC protests—i.e., he wasn't even protesting. He was handcuffed and hauled off to Pier 57. Later, he was informed that he was being slapped with four different charges, including resisting arrest. Dunlop's lawyer received a videotape from the district attorney's office, which the D.A. claimed was complete.

Eight months later, a member of "I-Witness Video," a project that assembled hundreds of videos during the convention week, received some police videotape for another, unrelated case and spotted Dunlop. It was the same footage that the lawyer had been given, but there was an additional sequence. This uncut version demonstrated that the charges against Dunlop were totally fabricated! All charges were dropped. On April 14, Dunlop's lawyer, Michael Conroy, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that the tape he had received directly from the D.A.'s office was doctored to exclude the evidence of his innocence. The D.A.'s office claimed the tape was edited by "mistake" (i.e., they were caught). Who knows how many videos were spliced and diced by "mistake" by the prosecutor's office and given to defendants? This case shows how the courts and cops, the entire apparatus of the capitalist state, act in collusion as agents of repression for the ruling class. At least 162 arrestees have either pleaded guilty or were convicted after a trial, and dubious police videotapes have bolstered the cases in some.

The proliferation of video cameras in the hands of amateurs as well as the cops themselves has exposed a lot more than the cops ever banked on. Back in December, Dennis Kyne was the first to have his case taken to a jury trial on charges of inciting a riot and resisting arrest. A cop, lying through his teeth, testified that Kyne put up such a fight it took four police officers to subdue him. One day after the cop's graphic testimony, before the defense even made its case, the prosecution abruptly dropped all charges. What had happened? During a recess, a video of the arrest was played which showed that the charges were false, and the cop who testified was nowhere to be seen in the footage.

Yusuke Joshua Banno, a college student from Arizona, was arrested on August 29, charged with assault and reckless endangerment, accused of igniting a papier-mâché dragon. He faced seven years in prison. After months of battling the city, he fortunately came across time-sequence photos taken by a newspaper photographer showing him far from where the fire occurred. All charges were dropped. However, Banno has lost a semester at school, and his family has spent some $30,000 for bail, legal fees and other expenses.

Jamal Holiday is a young black man arrested during the RNC protests. On August 30, Holiday was part of the Poor People's March when a plainclothes cop drove an unmarked motor scooter into the crowd of demonstrators, striking at least one woman. The protesters reacted in defense against the apparently crazed individual. As the video of the incident shows, Jamal told the police who came on the scene, "He just ran over people." The next day, in standard police racial profiling, Holiday was picked up by cops who claimed surveillance cameras showed him to be wearing the same clothing (a baseball cap and T-shirt) as an individual filmed kicking the undercover provocateur. With Holiday facing up to seven years in prison on assault charges, his bail was set at $250,000, in part because political literature was found in his home. Jamal Holiday spent seven months in Rikers Island, and after agreeing to a plea bargain, was finally released on probation under conditions of one year of "intensive supervision," but he still faces possible charges.

The camera "skills" of the NYPD have been in the news before. The NYPD VIPER Unit (Video Interactive Patrol Enhanced Response), equipped with infrared cameras, has been in place for surveillance for several years all over the streets of the city. The VIPER unit is particularly known to spy on and monitor the tenants in public housing. VIPER types were out in full force with their high-tech, heat-sensitive equipment during the RNC protests. One VIPER unit got caught out when they took a break from filming a Critical Mass bicycle protest where hundreds were arrested to zoom in repeatedly on a couple kissing on a roof.

More recently, on April 14, the City of New York settled—to the tune of $231,200—a contempt claim brought by 151 people detained by the cops. The city intentionally violated multiple court orders to release 560 people in order to prevent them from protesting while Bush was up on his imperial podium giving his acceptance speech.

The largely white, petty-bourgeois youth protesting the RNC got a small taste of what minority youth face every day in America's cities. For black and Latino youth in New York City, neighborhood arrest sweeps, police lies and brutality, frame-ups, detentions and prison are a daily fact of life. The racist capitalist state and its parties, the Republicans as well as the Democrats, are the class enemy of the working class and oppressed, from the picket lines to the ghettos.

Leading up to the convention, Bloomberg and the media whipped up "war on terror" hysteria against the protesters, most of whom were liberal Democratic Party supporters. The intention was to create a climate of so much fear of the "enemy within" that the cops could have free rein to use any means to suppress opposition to the festivities at the RNC. When the city outrageously denied a permit for a mass protest to be held in Central Park, the liberal United for Peace and Justice organizers did not even launch a fight against the ban. Their cowardly capitulation to this attack only emboldened the cops to go after the protesters more viciously.

The Parks Department is now proposing new rules on all gatherings of 50,000 or more people in Central Park that would effectively make sizable political rallies in Manhattan next to impossible. Fifth Avenue, the historic stage for political marches, is now off limits for any new permits. The Bloomberg administration has just refused a permit for a May Day march taking off from Union Square, a historic gathering place for workers and radicals. The demonstration is being built by the Million Worker March and the Troops Out Now Coalition, which is dominated by the pseudosocialist Workers World Party. According to the Troops Out Now Coalition, the rally and march will take place as scheduled.

While the American rulers wage their murderous, predatory wars around the world, their government wants to strangle protest and label all opponents "violent" and "terrorists"—categories that will provide the state a license to criminalize all political activity. Whatever rights we have under this oppressive capitalist order were won through tumultuous class and social struggle. The social power of the multiracial labor movement—welded to the struggles of black people, immigrants and defenders of civil liberties—must be mobilized in defense of our rights.