US: During protests at the Republican Party Convention in New York last September, hundreds of people were arrested with little violence. To reporters watching, it seemed the police acted with restraint and few activists tried to resist arrest.
But it was a different story when the cases started coming before the courts in New York recently. Based on police testimony, almost all the arrested protesters were charged with disorderly behaviour, resisting arrest and inciting a riot.
This might have resulted in heavy fines and jail sentences were it not for the fact that many private citizens had recorded what happened on light hand-held video cameras. They included 200 activists trained by a group called I-Witness Video. The footage provided a stark contrast between the testimony of those arrested and the police version.
In a demonstration at New York Public Library, activist Dennis Kyne, one of 75 arrested, was charged with resisting arrest and inciting a riot.
New York police officer Matthew Wohl told the court: "We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed. I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."
But amateur video showed police leading Kyne down the steps of the library, walking on his own feet, and being taken into custody.
Officer Wohl did not appear in the video, nor in recordings of four other incidents in which he made similar complaints, the New York Times reported.
In the case of Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested when going to buy sushi, the police provided tape as evidence - but a film archivist found the police tape was doctored to exclude scenes of Mr Dunlop behaving peacefully. The amateurs with cameras also recorded cases of arrests of people clearly obeying police instruction.
In a protest near Ground Zero a video shows a police officer announcing: "March two by two, obey the traffic lights, and you won't be arrested." They obeyed but police surrounded everyone with orange netting and arrested them. All the charges were dropped when this tape surfaced. This incident contradicts the assurances of NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg that police only arrested those who defied orders.
The disclosure of unjustified charges has raised questions about the strategy of police in curtailing liberties and making mass arrests to dampen protest during the Republican Convention.
As a result of video evidence, 400 people were exonerated and charges have been dismissed in about 1,500 of the 1,700 cases brought to court so far, according to the New York Times.